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presented  to  the 

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UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA  •   SAN  DIEGO  [ 

by      ■ 
FRIENDS  OF  THE  LIBRARY 

MR.   JOHN  C.   ROSE 


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A     TREASURY    OF    ENGLISH    SONNETS 


A     TREASURY 


ENGLISH    SONNETS 


EDITED 


FROM    THE    ORIGINAL    SOURCES    WITH    NOTES 
AND    ILLUSTRATIONS 


BY 

DAVID     M.,MAIN 


NEW   YORK 
R.  WORTHINGTON,  770   BROADWAY 

MDCCCLXXXI 


Copyright, 

1881, 

Bv  R.  WORTHINGTON. 


Sable  of  (Eontents 


PAGE 


Preface  -----  vii. 

Book  First  -            -            -  -            -         i 

Book  Second      -            -  -            -            79 

Notes  to  Book  First        -  _       -            -     237 

Notes  to  Book  Second  -            -          35  ^ 

Index  of  Authors              -  -            -     453 

Index  of  Living  Writers  -             -           45^ 

Index  of  First  Lines        -  -            -     457 


^,  I]ob  fairc  frnfes  mag  jron  ta  mortall  men 
Jrrom  iriisbomts  gnrbcit  gciu  ?    fjofo  mauii  man 
^jj  jjou  tl}£  foisfr  aui)  lljc  better  prone  ? 

Nicholas  Grimauld.     Totters  Miscellany:  1557- 


PREFACE 


The  aim  of  this  work  is  to  provide  students  and  lovers  of  good 
poetry  with  a  comprehensive  Selection  of  the  best  original  Son- 
fiets  known  to  the  Editor,  written  by  native  English  poets  not 
living;  and  to  illustrate  it  from  English  poetical  and  prose 
literature. 

In  pursuance  of  the  pla7i  adopted,  the  volwne  falls  into  two 
equal  portions, —  Text  and  Notes.  The  first  is  devoted  to  Son- 
nets by  those  writers  who  have  attained  the  highest,  or  nearly 
the  highest,  excellence  in  this  species  of  composition;  and  the 
second,  which  is  specially  intended  for  studeiits,  to  a  liberal 
system  of  illustration,  furnishing  a  complete  critical  apparatus 
for  the  study  of  the  Sonnets  in  the  Text,  and  containing  nume- 
rous supplementary  Sonnets  by  the  same  writers  and  others  of 
the  past  suggested  by  thejn.  Throughout  this  portion  also  have 
been  interspersed,  as  occasion  offered,  examples  from  some  of  our 
best  living  sonnet- writers;  but  it  will  be  obvious  that  these, 
which  come  in  simply  by  the  way,  and  form  no  essential  part 
of  the  work,  are  not  submitted  as  affording  any  adequate  repre- 
sentation of  our  co7itemporary  Sonnet-literature. 

Definitions  of  the  Sonnet  have  been  so  frequent  since  the 
present  work  was  first  taken  in  hand,  now  some  years  ago,  as 
to  determine  the  Editor  not  to  encumber  his  volume  with  the 

vii 


viii  -  PREFACE 

analytical  Essay  on  the  Sonnet  out  of  which  it  originally  gre7V. 
It  may  be  mentioned,  however,  that  the  Selection,  generally,  has 
been  made  in  accordance  with  principles  enforced  in  that  Essay, 
which — with  all  deference  to  such  rigid  disciplinarians  as 
Mr.  Tomlinson — favoured  a  relaxation,  so  far  as  English 
practice  is  concerned,  of  marly  every  law  in  the  Italian  code 
except  the  two  cardinal  ones  which  demajid  that  the  Sonnet 
shall  consist  of  fourteen  rimed  decasyllabic  verses,  and  be  a 
develop?nejit  of  one  idea,  mood,  feeling,  or  sentiment, — and  ojie 
only. 

By  reducing  the  contents  of  the  Text  to  the  orthography  of 
the  present  day — a  wholesome  test  of  poetic  vitality — and 
adhering,  in  all  quotations  in  the  Notes,  to  the  successive  contem- 
porary modes  of  spelling  and  [when  admissible)  punctuation, 
the  Editor  trusts  that  he  has  avoided  offence  to  the  advocates 
either  of  the  archaic  method  on  the  one  hand,  or  of  the  modern 
on  the  other. 

To  the  respective  owners  by  7vhose  liberality  so  large  a 
number  of  copyright  Somiets  are  inserted ;  and  to  the  many 
good  friends  who  by  word  or  deed  have  aided  him  in  his  labour 
of  love,  the  Editor  takes  this  opportimity  of  repeating  his 
grateful  acknowledgments. 

D.  M.  M. 

DouNE,  Perthshire, 

27/A  November,  jSjg. 


Treasitry  <9 


English  Sonnets 


IN     TWO     BOOKS 


^ooli  J^irst 


A  RENOUNCING   OF  LOVE. 


"PAREWELL,  Love,  and  all  fhy  laws  forever ! 

Thy  baited  hooks  shall  tangle  me  no  more  : 
Senec  and  Plato  call  me  from  thy  lore 
To  perfect  wealth  my  wit  for  to  endeavour. 
In  blind  error  when  I  did  persever, 
Thy  sharp  repulse,  that  pricketh  aye  so  sore, 
Taught  me  in  trifles  that  1  set  no  store  ; 
But  'scaped  forth  thence,  since,  liberty  is  lever. 
Therefore,  farewell !  go  trouble  younger  hearts. 
And  in  me  claim  no  more  authority  : 
With  idle  youth  go  use  thy  property, 
And  thereon  spend  thy  many  brittle  darts  ; 
For  hitherto  though  I  have  lost  my  time, 
Me  list  no  longer  rotten  boughs  to  climb. 


Sir  Tho.  Wyat 
1503— 1542 


^ 


2  A   Treasury  of 

II 
THE  DESERTED  LOVER  CON  SOLE  TH  HIMSELF 

WITH    REMEMBRANCE   THAT   ALL   WOMEN    AKE    BY 
NATURE    FICKLE. 

Sir  Tho.  wvat    "pvlVERS  doth  use,  as  I  have  heard  and  know, 
1503— 1542       ^-^     When  that  to  change  their  ladies  do  begin, 
To  mourn,  and  wail,  and  never  for  to  lynn  ; 
Hoping  thereby  to  'pease  their  painful  woe. 
And  some  there  be  that  when  it  chanceth  so 
That  women  change,  and  hate  where  love  hath  been, 
They  call  them  false,  and  think  with  words  to  win 
The  hearts  of  them  which  otherwhere  doth  grow. 
But  as  for  me,  though  that  by  chance  indeed 
Change  hath  outworn  the  favour  that  I  had, 
I  will  not  wail,  lament,  nor  yet  be  sad, 
Nor  call  her  false  that  falsely  did  me  feed ; 
But  let  it  pass,  and  think  it  is  of  kind 
That  often  change  doth  please  a  woman's  mind. 

Ill 
DESCRIPTION  OF  SPRING, 

WHEREIN    EACH    THING    RENEWS,  SAVE   ONLY   THE   LOVER. 

Earl  ofSurrey  'T^hE  soote  season,  that  bud  and  bloom  furth  brings, 
1516?— 1547        -L       With  green  hath  clad  the  hill  and  eke  the  vale, 
The  nightingale  with  feathers  new  she  sings  ; 
The  turtle  to  her  make  hath  told  her  tale. 
Summer  is  come,  for  every  spray  now  springs. 
The  hart  hath  hung  his  old  head  on  the  pale  ; 
The  buck  in  brake  his  winter  coat  he  flings  ; 
The  fishes  flete  with  new-repaired  scale  ; 
The  adder  all  her  slough  away  she  slings  ; 
The  swift  swallow  pursueth  the  flies  smale ; 
The  busy  bee  her  honey  now  she  mings  ; 
AVinter  is  worn  that  was  the  flowers'  bale. 
And  thus  I  see  among  these  pleasant  things 
Each  care  decays,  and  yet  my  sorrow  springs. 


English  Sonnets  3 

IV 
VOW  TO  LOVE  FAITHFULLY, 

HOWSOEVER    HE    BE   REWARDED. 

QET  me  whereas  the  sun  doth  parch  the  green,        Earlof Surrey 

^     Or  Avhere  his  beams  do  not  dissolve  the  ice  ;  i5i6?-i547 

In  temperate  heat,  where  he  is  felt  and  seen  ; 

In  presence  prest  of  people  mad  or  wise  ; 

Set  me  in  high,  or  yet  in  low  degree  ; 

In  longest  night,  or  in  the  shortest  day  ; 

In  clearest  sky,  or  where  clouds  thickest  be  ; 

In  lusty  youth,  or  when  my  hairs  are  gray  : 

Set  me  in  heaven,  in  earth,  or  else  in  hell, 

In  hill,  or  dale,  or  in  the  foaming  flood  ; 

Thrall,  or  at  large,  alive  whereso  I  dwell, 

Sick,  or  in  health,  in  evil  fame,  or  good, 

Hers  will  I  be  ;  and  only  with  this  thought 

Content  myself,  although  my  chance  be  nought. 


PRAISE  OF  CERTAIN  PSALMS  OF  DA  VID 

TRANSLATED    BY   SIR   T.    \V.    THE   ELDER. 


nPHE  great  Macedon  that  out  of  Persia  chased 
^       Darius,  of  whose  huge  power  all  Asia  rung. 
In  the  rich  ark  Dan  Homer's  rimes  he  placed. 
Who  feigned  gests  of  heathen  princes  sung. 
What  holy  grave,  what  worthy  sepulture. 
To  Wyat's  Psalms  should  Christians  then  purchase  ? 
Where  he  doth  paint  the  lively  faith  and  pure. 
The  steadfast  hope,  the  sweet  return  to  grace 
Of  just  David,  by  perfect  penitence  ; 
Where  rulers  may  see  in  a  mirror  clear 
The  bitter  fruit  of  false  concupiscence  ; 
How  Jewry  bought  Uriah's  death  full  dear. 
In  princes'  hearts  God's  scourge  imprinted  deep. 
Ought  them  awake  out  of  their  sinful  sleep. 


4  A  Treasury  of 

VI 
AN  EPITAPH. 

EarlofSurrev    1^  ORFOLK  sprung  thee,Lambeth  holds  thee  dead; 
isi6?-i547      1  M      Clere,  of  the  Count  of  Cleremont,  thou  hight ; 
Within  the  womb  of  Ormond's  race  thou  bred, 
And  saw'st  thy  cousin  crowned  in  thy  sight. 
Shelton  for  love,  Surrey  for  lord  thou  chase, 
(Ay  me  !  whilst  life  did  last  that  league  was  tender) 
Tracing  whose  steps  thou  sawest  Kelsal  blaze, 
Landrecy  burnt,  and  battered  Boulogne  render. 
At  Montreuil  gates,  hopeless  of  all  recure, 
Thine  earl,  half  dead,  gave  in  thy  hand  his  will ; 
Which  cause  did  thee  this  pining  death  procure, 
Ere  summers  four  times  seven  thou  couldst  fulfil. 
Ah,  Clere  !  if  love  had  booted  care  or  cost, 
Heaven  had  not  won,  nor  earth  so  timely  lost. 


VII 
OF  SAPDANAPALUS'  DISHONOURABLE  LIFE 

AND   MISERABLE   UEATH. 

'  I  "H'  Assyrian  king,  in  peace,  with  foul  desire 

And  filthy  lusts  that  stained  his  regal  heart ; 
In  war,  that  should  set  princely  hearts  on  fire, 
Did  yield,  vanquished  for  want  of  martial  art. 
The  dint  of  swords  from  kisses  seemed  strange, 
And  harder  than  his  lady's  side  his  targe  ; 
From  glutton  feasts  to  soldier's  fare  a  change  ; 
His  helmet  far  above  a  garland's  charge  : 
Who  scarce  the  name  of  manhood  did  retain. 
Drenched  in  sloth  and  womanish  delight. 
Feeble  of  spirit,  impatient  of  pain. 
When  he  had  lost  his  honour  and  his  right, 
(Proud  time  of  wealth,  in  storms  appalled  with  dread,) 
Murthered  himself,  to  show  some  manful  deed. 


English  Sonnets  5 

VIII 

(O 

TTAPPY,  ye  leaves  !  whenas  those  lily  hands,  Edmund 

■^  -*■     Which  hold  my  life  in  their  dead-doing  might,  ""en^r 

Shall  handle  you,  and  hold  in  love's  soft  bands,  ^^^^  -^599 

Like  captives  trembling  at  the  victor's  sight ; 

And  happy  lines  !  on  which,  with  starry  light. 

Those  lamping  eyes  will  deign  sometimes  to  look, 

And  read  the  sorrows  of  my  dying  spright. 

Written  v/ith  tears  in  heart's  close-bleeding  book  ; 

And  happy  rimes  !  bathed  in  the  sacred  brook 

Of  Helicon,  whence  she  derived  is  ; — 

When  ye  behold  that  Angel's  blessed  look, 

My  soul's  long-lacked  food,  my  heaven's  bliss, 

Leaves,  lines,  and  rimes,  seek  her  to  please  alone, 

Whom  if  ye  please,  I  care  for  other  none. 


IX 

(5) 

"D  UDELY  thou  wrongest  my  dear  heart's  desire, 

In  finding  fault  with  her  too  portly  pride  : 
The  thing  which  I  do  most  in  her  admire. 
Is  of  the  world  unworthy  most  envied  ; 
For  in  those  lofty  looks  is  close  implied 
Scorn  of  base  things,  and  sdeign  of  foul  dishonour, 
Threatening  rash  eyes  which  gaze  on  her  so  wide, 
That  loosely  they  ne  dare  to  look  upon  her. 
Such  pride  is  praise,  such  portliness  is  honour, 
That  boldened  innocence  bears  in  her  eyes  ; 
And  her  fair  countenance,  like  a  goodly  banner, 
Spreads  in  defiance  of  all  enemies. 
Was  never  in  this  wc^i-ld  ought  worthy  tried, 
Without  some  spark  of  such  self-pleasing  pride. 


6  A  Treasury  of        ^ 

X 

(8) 
Edmund         A  /TORE  than  iTiost  fair,  full  of  the  living  fire 

Sl'ENSKR  1 V  I  • 

—  Kindled  above  unto  the  Maker  near  : 


1552?— 1599 


No  eyes  but  joys,  in  which  all  powers  conspire 
That  to  the  world  nought  else  be  counted  dear  ! 
Through  your  bright  beams  doth  not  the  blinded  guest 
Shoot  out  his  dart  to  base  affections  wound  ; 
But  angels  come  to  lead  frail  minds  to  rest 
In  chaste  desires,  on  heavenly  beauty  bound. 
You  frame  my  thoughts,  and  fashion  me  within  ; 
You  stop  my  tongue,  and  teach  my  heart  to  speak  ; 
You  calm  the  storm  that  passion  did  begin, 
Strong  through  your  cause,  but  by  your  virtue  weak. 
Dark  is  the  world  where  your  light  shined  never  ; 
Well  is  he  born  that  may  behold  you  ever. 


XI 

(17) 

T^HE  glorious  portrait  of  that  Angel's  face, 

Made  to  amaze  weak  men's  confused  skill, 
And  this  world's  worthless  glory  to  embase  ; 
What  pen,  what  pencil,  can  express  her  fill  ? 
For  though  he  colours  could  devise  at  will, 
And  eke  his  learned  hand  at  pleasure  guide, 
Lest,  trembling,  it  his  workmanship  should  spill, 
Yet  many  wondrous  things  there  are  beside  : — 
The  sweet  eye-glances  that  like  arrows  glide, 
The  charming  smiles  that  rob  sense  from  the  hearty 
The  lovely  pleasance,  and  the  lofty  pride, 
Cannot  expressed  be  by  any  art. 
A  greater  craftsman's  hand  thereto  doth  need 
That  can  express  the  life  of  things  indeed. 


..        English  Sonnets 


xn 

(22) 


HTHIS  holy  season,  fit  to  fast  and  pray,  |°enser 

Men  to  devotion  ouprht  to  be  inclined  :  -— - 

o  1552?— 1599 

Therefore  I  likewise  on  so  holy  day 

For  my  sweet  Saint  some  service  fit  will  find. 

Her  temple  fair  is  built  within  my  mind, 

In  which  her  glorious  image  placed  is. 

On  which  my  thoughts  do  day  and  night  attend, 

Like  sacred  priests  that  never  think  amiss  ! 

There  I  to  her,  as  th'  author  of  my  bliss, 

Will  build  an  altar  to  appease  her  ire, 

And  on  the  same  my  heart  will  sacrifice, 

Burning  in  flames  of  pure  and  chaste  desire  : 

The  which  vouchsafe,  O  goddess,  to  accept. 

Amongst  thy  dearest  relics  to  be  kept. 


XIII 

(34) 

T    IKE  as  a  ship  that  through  the  ocean  wide, 
"^     By  conduct  of  some  star,  doth  make  her  way 
Whenas  a  storm  hath  dimmed  her  trusty  guide. 
Out  of  her  course  doth  wander  far  astray, — 
So  I,  whose  star,  that  wont  with  her  bright  ray 
Me  to  direct,  with  clouds  is  overcast. 
Do  wander  now  in  darkness  and  dismay. 
Through  hidden  perils  round  about  me  placed  ; 
Yet  hope  I  well  that,  when  this  storm  is  past, 
My  Helice,  the  lodestar  of  my  life. 
Will  shine  again,  and  look  on  me  at  last, 
With  lovely  light  to  clear  my  cloudy  grief. 
Till  then  I  wander  gareful,  comfortless. 
In  secret  sorrow  and  sad  pensiveness. 


1552?— 1599 


8  A   Treasury  of        * 

XIV 

(37) 
Edmund        "\  "\  7"HAT  guile  is  this,  that  those  her  golden  tresses 
She  doth  attire  under  a  net  of  gold  ; 
And  with  sly  skill  so  cunningly  them  dresses, 
That  which  is  ^old  or  hair  may  scarce  be  told  ? 
Is  it  that  men's  frail  eyes  which  gaze  too  bold, 
She  may  entangle  in  that  golden  snare  ; 
And  being  caught  may  craftily  enfold 
Their  weaker  hearts  which  are  not  well  aware  ? 
Take  heed,  therefore,  mine  eyes,  how  ye  do  stare 
Henceforth  too  rashly  on  that  guileful  net, 
In  which  if  ever  ye  entrapped  are. 
Out  of  her  bands  ye  by  no  means  shall  get. 
Fondness  it  were  for  any,  being  free. 
To  covet  fetters,  though  they  golden  be  ! 


XV 

(40)  ^ 

TV  yfARK  when  she  smiles  with  amiable  cheer. 

And  tell  me  whereto  can  ye  liken  it,  ; 

When  on  each  eyelid  sweetly  do  appear 

An  hundred  Graces  as  in  shade  to  sit.  ' 

Likest  it  seemeth,  in  my  simple  wit. 

Unto  the  fair  sunshine  in  summer's  day,  i 

That  when  a  dreadful  storm  away  is  flit. 
Through  the  broad  world  doth  spread  his  goodly  ray; 
At  sight  whereof,  each  bird  that  sits  on  spray, 
And  every  beast  that  to  his  den  was  fled. 
Comes  forth  afresh  out  of  their  late  dismay. 
And  ta  the  light  lift  up  their  drooping  head. 
So  my  storm-beaten  heart  likewise  is  cheered 
With  that  sunshine,  when  cloudy  looks  are  cleared. 


English  Sonnets 


XVI 

(6i) 


•y  HE  glorious  image  of  the  Maker's  beauty,  spTnser 

My  sovereign  saint,  the  idol  of  my  thought,  — 

Dare  not  henceforth  above  the  bounds  of  duty 
T'  accuse  of  pride  or  rashly  blame  for  ought. 
For  being  as  she  is  divinely  wrought 
And  of  the  brood  of  angels  heavenly  born, 
And  with  the  crew  of  blessed  saints  upbrought, 
Each  of  which  did  her  with  their  gifts  adorn  ; 
The  bud  of  joy,  the  blossom  of  the  morn, 
The  beam  of  light  whom  mortal  eyes  admire  ; 
What  reason  is  it  then  but  she  should  scorn 
Base  things,  that  to  her  love  too  bold  aspire  ! 
Such  heavenly  forms  ought  rather  worshipped  be, 
Than  dare  be  loved  by  men  of  mean  degree. 


XVII 

(65) 

T^HE  doubt  which  ye  misdeem,  fair  Love,  is  vain. 

That  fondly  fear  to  lose  your  liberty  ; 
When  losing  one,  two  liberties  ye  gain. 
And  make  him  bond  that  bondage  erst  did  fly. 
Sweet  be  the  bands  the  which  true  love  doth  tie 
Without  constraint  or  dread  of  any  ill : 
The  gentle  bird  feels  no  captivity 
Within  her  cage,  but  sings,  and  feeds  her  fill ; — 
There  pride  dare  not  approach,  nor  discord  spill 
The  league  'twixt  them  that  loyal  love  hath  bound, 
But  simple  truth  and  mutual  good-will 
Seeks  with  sweet  peace  to  salve  each  other's  Avound  ; 
There  Faith  doth  fearless  dwell  in  brazen  tower. 
And  spotless  Pleasure  builds  her  sacred  bower. 


Edmund 
Spenser 

1552?— 1599 


10  A  Treasury  of 

XVIII 

(67) 

T    IKE  as  a  huntsman  after  weary  chase 
"^     Seeing  the  game  from  hnn  escaped  away, 
Sits  down  to  rest  him  in  some  shady  place, 
With  panting  hounds  beguiled  of  their  prey, — 
So,  after  long  pursuit  and  vain  assay. 
When  I  all  weary  had  the  chase  forsook. 
The  gentle  deer  returned  the  self-same  way, 
Thinking  to  quench  her  thirst  at  the  next  brook : 
There  she  beholding  me  with  milder  look, 
Sought  not  to  fly,  but  fearless  still  did  bide  ; 
Till  I  in  hand  her  yet  half  trembling  took. 
And  with  her  own  good-will  her  firmly  tied. 
Strange  thing,  me  seemed,  to  see  a  beast  so  wild 
So  goodly  won,  with  her  own  will  beguiled. 


XIX  I 

(  68  )  \ 

1\ /TOST  glorious  Lord  of  life  !  that  on  this  day 

Didst  make  thy  triumph  over  death  and  sin, 

And  having  harrowed  hell  didst  bring  away  l 

Captivity  thence  captive,  us  to  win  :  1 
This  joyous  day,  dear  Lord,  with  joy  begin  ; 

And  grant  that  we,  for  whom  Thou  diddest  die,  '\ 

Being  with  thy  dear  blood  clean  washed  from  sin,  I 

May  live  for  ever  in  felicity  !  1 

And  that  thy  love  we  weighing  worthily,  ! 

May  likewise  love  Thee  for  the  same  again  ;  ' 

And  for  thy  sake,  that  all  like  dear  didst  buy,  i 

With  love  may  one  another  entertain.                                '  ; 
So  let  us  love,  dear  Love,  like  as  we  ought : 
Love  is  the  lesson  which  the  Lord  us  taught. 


F 


English  Sonnets  ii 

XX  \ 

(70)  j 

RESH  Spring,  the  herald  of  love's  mighty  king,  ^^^^^^     ■  i 


In  whose  coat-armour  richly  are  displayed 

.  1552''— 1599 

All  sorts  of  flowers  the  which  on  earth  do  sprmg, 

In  goodly  colours  gloriously  arrayed  ; 

Go  to  my  Love  where  she  is  careless  laid 

Yet  in  her  winter's  bower  not  well  awake  ; 

Tell  her  the  joyous  time  will  not  be  stayed 

Unless  she  do  him  by  the  forelock  take  ; 

Bid  her  therefore  herself  soon  ready  make 

To  wait  on  Love  amongst  his  lovely  crev/  ; 

Where  every  one  that  misseth  then  her  make 

Shall  be  by  him  amerced  with  penance  due. 

Make  haste  therefore,  sweet  Love,  whilst  it  is  prime ; 

For  none  can  call  again  the  passed  time. 


XXI 

(72) 

/^FT  when  my  spirit  doth  spread  her  bolder  wings, 

^-^     In  mind  to  mount  up  to  the  purest  sky, 

It  down  is  weighed  with  thought  of  earthly  things. 

And  clogged  with  burden  of  mortality  ; 

Where  when  that  sovereign  beauty  it  doth  spy, 

Resembling  heaven's  glory  in  her  hght, 

Drawn  with  sweet  pleasure's  bait  it  back  doth  fly, 

And  unto  heaven  forgets  her  former  flight. 

There  my  frail  fancy,  fed  with  full  delight. 

Doth  bathe  in  bliss,  and  raantleth  most  at  ease  ; 

Ne  thinks  of  other  heaven  but  how  it  might 

Her  heart's  desire  with  most  contentment  please. 

Heart  need  not  wish  none  other  happiness 

But  here  on  earth  to  have  such  heaven's  bliss. 


1552  .—1599 


12  A  Ti'easury  of 

XXII 

(75) 

s°^n"ser        r^^-^  ^^^  "'"  wrote  her  name  upon  the  strand  ; 
—  ^-^     But  came  the  waves  and  washed  it  away  : 

Again  I  Avrote  it  with  a  second  hand, 
But  came  the  tide  and  made  my  pains  his  prey. 
Vain  man  !  said  she,  that  dost  in  vain  assay 
A  mortal  thing  so  to  immortahze  ; 
For  I  myself  shall  like  to  this  decay. 
And  eke  my  name  be  wiped  out  likewise. 
Not  so,  quoth  I  ;  let  baser  things  devise 
To  die  in  dust,  but  you  shall  live  by  fame  : 
My  verse  your  virtues  rare  shall  eternize, 
And  in  the  heavens  write  your  glorious  name, — 
Where,  whenas  death  shall  all  the  world  subdue, 
Our  love  shall  live,  and  later  life  renew. 


XXIII 

(79) 
TV  yr  EN  call  you  fair,  and  you  do  credit  it, 

For  that  yourself  ye  daily  such  do  see ; 
But  the  true  fair,  that  is  the  gentle  wit 
And  virtuous  mind,  is  much  more  praised  of  me. 
For  all  the  rest,  however  fair  it  be. 
Shall  turn  to  nought  and  lose  that  glorious  hue  ; 
But  only  that  is  permanent  and  free 
From  frail  corruption,  that  doth  flesh  ensue. 
That  is  true  beauty  :  that  doth  argue  you 
To  be  divine,  and  born  of  heavenly  seed  ; 
Derived  from  that  fair  Spirit  from  whom  all  true 
And  perfect  beauty  did  at  first  proceed. 
He  only  fair,  and  what  He  fair  hath  made  ; 
All  other  fair,  like  flowers,  untimely  fade. 


Edmund 

ENSE 
1552?— 1599 


English  Sonnets  13 

XXIV 

(88) 

T    IKE  as  the  culver  on  the  bared  bough  IT^^^kk 

^     Sits  maurning  for  the  absence  of  her  mate, 

And  in  her  songs  sends  many  a  wishful  vow 

For  his  return  that  seems  to  linger  late  : 

So  I  alone,  now  left  disconsolate. 

Mourn  to  myself  the  absence  of  my  Love, 

And,  wandering  here  and  there  all  desolate. 

Seek  with  my  plaints  to  match  that  mournful  dove  ; 

Ne  joy  of  ought  that  under  heaven  doth  hove 

Can  comfort  me,  but  her  own  joyous  sight ; 

Whose  sweet  aspect  both  God  and  man  can  move 

In  her  unspotted  pleasance  to  delight. 

Dark  is  my  day  whiles  her  fair  light  I  miss, 

And  dead  my  life  that  wants  such  lively  bliss. 


XXV 
A    VISION  UPON  THE  FAERY  QUEEN. 

A /[  ETHOUGHT  I  saw  the  grave  where  Laura  lay,     ^ir  Walter 

J-T 1     Within  that  temple  where  the  vestal  flame  — 

Was  wont  to  burn  ;  and  passing  by  that  way 

To  see  that  buried  dust  of  living  fame, 

Whose  tomb  fair  Love  and  fairer  Virtue  kept. 

All  suddenly  I  saw  the  Faery  Queen  : 

At  whose  approach  the  soul  of  Petrarch  v/ept ; 

And  from  thenceforth  those  Graces  were  not  seen, 

For  they  this  Queen  attended  ;  in  whose  stead 

Oblivion  laid  him  down  on  Laura's  hearse. 

Hereat  the  hardest  stones  were  seen  to  bleed. 

And  groans  of  buried  ghosts  the  heavens  did  pierce, 

Where  Homer's  spright  did  tremble  all  for  grief, 

And  cursed  the  access  of  that  celestial  thief. 


1552 — 1618 


14  A   Treasury  of 

XXVI 
CONCERyiNG  THE  HONOUR  OF  BOOKS. 

joHK  Florio      O  IXCE  honour  from  the  honourer  proceeds, 
1553— 1625       ^-^     How  well  do  they  deserve,  that  njemorize 
And  leave  in  books  for  all  posterities 
The  names  of  worthies  and  their  virtuous  deeds  ; 
^\'hen  all  their  glory  else,  like  water-weeds 
Without  their  element,  presently  dies 
And  all  their  greatness  quite  forgotten  lies, 
And  when  and  how  they  flourished  no  man  heeds  I 
How  poor  remembrances  are  statues,  tombs, 
And  other  monuments  that  men  erect 
To  princes,  which  remain  in  closed  rooms 
^  Where  but  a  few  behold  them,  in  respect 
Of  Books,  that  to  the  universal  eye 
Show  how  they  lived  ;  the  other  where  they  lie ! 


XXVII 

(15) 
Sir  Phiup       V/'OU  that  do  search  for  every  purling  spnng 

SlE)VEY  ■ 

—  Which  from  the  ribs  of  old  Parnassus  flows, 

'354  i3  And  every  flower,  not  sweet  perhaps,  which  grows 

Near  thereabouts,  into  your  posy  wring  ; 
Ye  that  do  dictionary's  method  bring 
Into  your  rimes,  running  in  rattling  rows  ; 
You  that  poor  Petrarch's  long-deceased  woes 
With  new-bom  sighs  and  denizened  wit  do  sing ; 
You  take  wrong  ways  !     Those  far-fet  helps  be  such 
As  do  bewray  a  want  of  invrard  touch  : 
And  sure  at  length  stolen  goods  do  come  to  light. 
But  if,  both  for  your  love  and  skill,  your  name 
You  seek  to  nurse  at  fullest  breasts  of  Fame, 
Stella  behold,  and  then  begin  t'  endite. 


SiDNKV 
1554—1586 


EnglisJi  Sonnets  15 

XXVIII 

(31) 

WITH  how  sad  steps,  O  Moon  !  thou  dimb'st  the      Sir  Phiup 
skies  ! 
How  silently,  and  with  how  wan  a  face  ! 
What  !  may  it  be  that  even  in  heavenly  place 
That  busy  Archer  his  sharp  arrows  tries  ? 
Sure,  if  that  long-with-love-acquainted  eyes 
Can  judge  of  love,  thou  feel'st  a  lover's  case  ; 
T  read  it  in  thy  looks :  thy  languished  grace, 
To  me,  that  feel  the  like,  thy  state  descries. 
Then,  even  of  fellowship,  O  Moon  !  tell  me, 
Is  constant  love  deemed  there  but  want  of  wit  ? 
Are  beauties  there  as  proud  as  here  they  be  ? 
Do  they  above  love  to  be  loved,  and  yet 
Those  lovers  scorn  whom  that  love  doth  possess  ? — 
Do  they  call  virtue  there  ungratefulness  ? 


XXIX  ; 


(39) 

/^^OME  Sleep,  O  Sleep  !  the  certain  knot  of  peace, 

^^     The  baiting-place  of  wit,  the  balm  of  woe, 

The  poor  man's  wealth,  the  prisoner's  release. 

The  indifferent  judge  between  the  high  and  low ; 

With  shield  of  proof  shield  me  from  out  the  prease 

Of  those  fierce  darts  Despair  at  me  doth  throw  : 

Oh  !  make  in  me  those  civil  wars  to  cease  ; 

I  will  good  tribute  pay  if  thou  do  so. 

Take  thou  of  me  smooth  pillows,  sweetest  bed, 

A  chamber  deaf  of  noise  and  blind  of  light, 

A  rosy  garland  and  a  weary  head  : 

And  if  these  things,  as  being  thine  by  right, 

Move  not  thy  heavy  grace,  thou  shalt  in  me 

Livelier  than  elsewhere  Stella's  image  see. 


Sir  Philip 
Sidney 


1 6  A   Treasury  of 

XXX 

(41) 
TTAVING  this  day  my  horse,  my  hand,  my  lance 

—  „.  Guided  so  well  that  I  obtained  the  prize, 

1354— 1580  ^       ' 

Both  by  the  judgment  of  the  English  eyes 
And  of  some  sent  from  that  sweet  enemy,  France  ; 
Horsemen  my  skill  in  horsemanship  advance  ; 
Townfolks  my  strength  ;  a  daintier  judge  applies 
His  praise  to  sleight,  which  from  good  use  doth  rise  ; 
Some  lucky  wits  impute  it  but  to  chance  ; 
Others,  because  of  both  sides  I  do  take 
My  blood  from  them  who  did  excel  in  this. 
Think  Nature  me  a  man  of  arms  did  make. 
How  far  they  shot  awry  !     The  true  cause  is, 
Stella  looked  on  ;  and  from  her  heavenly  face 
Sent  forth  the  beams  which  made  so  fair  my  race. 


XXXI 

(54) 

TI>  ECAUSE  I  breathe  not  love  to  every  one, 

Nor  do  not  use  set  colours  for  to  wear, 
Nor  nourish  special  locks  of  vowed  hair, 
Nor  give  each  speech  a  full  point  of  a  groan. 
The  courtly  nymphs,  acquainted  with  the  moan 
Of  them  who  in  their  lips  Love's  standard  bear : 
'  What,  he  !  '  say  they  of  me  :  *  now  I  dare  swear 
He  cannot  love.     No,  no,  let  him  alone.' — 
And  think  so  still,  so  Stella  know  my  mind  ! 
Profess  indeed  I  do  not  Cupid's  art  ; 
But  you,  fair  maids,  at  length  this  true  shall  find. 
That  his  right  badge  is  but  worn  in  the  heart : 
Dumb  swans,  not  chattering  pies,  do  lovers  prove  ; 
They  love  indeed  who  quake  to  say  they  love. 


N 


English  Sonnets  17 

XXXII 

(64) 
O  more,  my  dear,  no  more  these  counsels  try ;  ^Sidney"" 


O  give  my  passions  leave  to  run  their  race  ! 
Let  Fortune  lay  on  me  her  worst  disgrace, 
Let  folk  o'ercharged  with  brain  against  me  cry  ; 
Let  clouds  bedim  my  face,  break  in  mine  eye, 
Let  me  no  steps  but  of  lost  labour  trace  ; 
Let  all  the  earth  with  scorn  recount  my  case  ; 
But  do  not  will  me  from  my  love  to  fly. 
I  do  not  envy  Aristotle's  wit. 
Nor  do  aspire  to  Ceesar's  bleeding  fame  ; 
Nor  ought  do  care  though  some  above  me  sit ; 
Nor  hope  nor  wish  another  course  to  frame. 
But  that  which  once  may  win  thy  cruel  heart : 
Thou  art  my  wit,  and  thou  my  virtue  art. 


XXXIII 

T   EAVE  me,  O  Love,  which  reachest  but  to  dust, 
— '     And  thou,  my  mind,  aspire  to  higher  things  ; 
Grow  rich  in  that  which  never  taketh  rust : 
What  ever  fades  but  fading  pleasure  brings. 
Draw  in  thy  beams,  and  humble  ail  thy  might 
To  that  sweet  yoke  where  lasting  freedoms  be, 
^^^lich  breaks  the  clouds  and  opens  forth  the  light 
That  doth  both  shine  and  give  us  sight  to  see. 
Oh,  take  fast  hold  !  let  that  light  be  thy  guide 
In  this  small  course  which  birth  draws  out  to  death, 
And  think  how  evil  becometh  him  'to  slide 
Who  seeketh  heaven,  arid  comes  of  heavenly  breath. 
Then  farewell,  world  ;  thy  uttermost  I  see  : 
Eternal  Love,  maintain  thy  life  in  me. 


1554— 1586 


6 

<7V 


plcnbibis  loucjum  fcalibito  nngts. 


1 8  A    Treasury  of 

XXXIV 

^Sidney""      CINCE  Nature's  works  be  good, and  death  doth  serve 
~7j86  As  Nature's  work,  why  should  we  fear  to  die  ? 

Since  fear  is  vain  but  when  it  may  preserve. 
Why  should  we  fear  that  which  we  cannot  fly  ? 
Fear  is  more  pain  than  is  the  pain  it  fears, 
Disarming  human  minds  of  native  might ; 
While  each  conceit  an  ugly  figure  bears 
Which  were  not  evil,  well  viewed  in  reason's  light. 
Our  owly  eyes,  which  dimmed  with  passions  be, 
And  scarce  discern  the  dawn  of  coming  day. 
Let  them  be  cleared,  and  now  begin  to  see 
Our  life  is  but  a  step  in  dusty  way. 
Then  let  us  hold  the  bHss  of  peaceful  mind  ; 
Since  this  we  feel,  great  loss  we  cannot  find. 


XXXV 
OF  HIS  MISTJiESS: 

UPON   OCCASION    OF    HER   WALKING    IN    A    GARDEN. 

Constable      1\/T^  lady's  presence  makes"the  roses  red. 

Because  to  see  her  lips  they  blush  for  shame  ; 
The  lily's  leaves,  for  envy,  pale  became. 
And  her  white  hands  in  them  this  envy  bred. 
The  marigold  abroad  her  leaves  doth  spread, 
Because  the  sun's  and  her  power  is  the  same  ; 
The  violet  of  purple  colour  came. 
Dyed  with  the  blood  she  made  my  heart  to  shed. 
In  brief,  all  flowers  from  her  their  virtue  take  : 
From  her  sweet  breath  their  sweet  smells  do  proceed. 
The  living  heat  which  her  eye-beams  do  make 
Warmeth  the  ground,  and  quickeneth  the  seed. 
The  rain  wherewith  she  watereth  these  flowers 
Falls  from  mine  eyes,  which  she  dissolves  in  showers. 


Henry 

loNSTABl 
1555  ?— 1610 


Constable 
I3S5  ? — 1610  ? 


English  Sonnets  19 

XXXVI 

TDITY  refusing  my  poor  Love  to  feed,  r^,c^Tr, 

A  beggar  starved  for  want  of  help  he  Hes, 
And  at  your  mouth,  the  door  of  beauty,  cries 
That  thence  some  ahxis  of  sweet  grants  may  proceed. 
But  as  he  waiteth  for  some  ahiies-deed 
A  cherry-tree  before  the  door  he  spies^ 
'  O  dear  ! '  quoth  he,  '  two  cherries  may  suffice, 
Two  only  life  may  save  in  this  my  need.' 
But  beggars,  can  they  nought  but  cherries  eat  ? 
Pardon  my  Love,  he  is  a  goddess'  son, 
And  never  feedeth  but  on  dainty  meat, 
Else  need  he  not  to  pine  as  he  hath  done  : 
For  only  the  sweet  fruit  of  this  sweet  tree 
Can  give  food  to  my  Love,  and  life  to  me. 


XXXVII 

TVJEEDS  must  I  leave,  and  yet  needs  must  I  love  ; 

In  vain  my  wit  doth  paint  in  verse  my  woe  : 
Disdain  in  thee  despair  in  me  doth  show 
How  by  my  wit  I  do  my  folly  prove. 
All  this  my  heart  from  love  can  never  move  ; 
Love  is  not  in  my  heart,  no,  lady,  no  : 
My  heart  is  love  itself  ;  till  I  forego 
My  heart,  I  never  can  my  love  remove. 
How  shall  I  then  leave  love  ?     I  do  intend 
Not  to  crave  grace,  but  yet  to  wish  it  still ; 
Not  to  praise  thee,  but  beauty  to  commend, 
And  so  by  beauty's  praise,  praise  thee  I  will. 
For  as  my  heart  is  love,  love  not  in  me. 
So  beauty  thou, — beauty 'is  not  in  thee. 


Henry 

Constable 

1555?— 1610? 


20  A  Treasury  of 

XXXVIII 
TO   SAINT  KATHARINE. 

"DECAUSE  thou  wast  the  daughter  of  a  king, 

Whose  beauty  did  all  Nature's  works  exceed, 
And  wisdom  wonder  to  the  world  did  breed, 
A  muse  might  rouse  itself  on  Cupid's  wing  ; 
But,  sith  the  graces  which  from  nature  spring 
Were  graced  by  those  which  from  grace  did  proceed, 
And  glory  have  deserved,  my  Muse  doth  need 
An  angel's  feathers  when  thy  praise  I  sing. 
Eor  all  in  thee  became  angelical  : 
An  angel's  face  had  angels'  purity. 
And  thou  an  angel's  tongue  didst  speak  withal ; 
Lo  !  why  thy  soul,  set  free  by  martyrdom. 
Was  crowned  by  God  in  angels'  company. 
And  angels'  hands  thy  body  did  entomb. 


XXXIX 


Thomas  Lodge 
1556?— 1625 


TIj'AIR  art  thou,  Phyllis  ;  ay,  so  fair,  sweet  maid. 

As  nor  the  sun  nor  I  have  seen  more  fair  ; 
For  in  thy  cheeks  sweet  roses  are  embayed, 
And  gold  more  pure  than  gold  doth  gild  thy  hair. 
Sweet  bees  have  hived  their  honey  on  thy  tongue, 
And  Hebe  spiced  her  nectar  with  thy  breath  : 
About  thy  neck  do  all  the  graces  throng. 
And  lay  such  baits  as  might  entangle  Death. 
In  such  a  breast  what  heart  would  not  be  thrall  ? 
From  such  sweet  arms  who  would  not  wish  embraces? 
At  thy  fair  hands  who  wonders  not  at  all 
Wonder  itself  through  ignorance  embases. 
Yet  natheless  though  wondrous  gifts  you  call  these 
My  faith  is  far  more  wonderful  than  all  these. 


English  Sonnets 


21 


XL 


A /f  USES  that  sing  Love's  sensual  empery, 

And  lovers  kindling  your  enraged  fires 
At  Cupid's  bonfires  burning  in  the  eye, 
Blown  with  the  empty  breath  of  vain  desires, — 
You  that  prefer  the  painted  cabinet 
Before  the  wealthy  jewels  it  doth  store  ye, 
That  all  your  joys  in  dying  figures  set. 
And  stain  the  living  substance  of  your  glory ; 
Abjure  those  joys,  abhor  their  memory. 
And  let  my  Love  the  honoured  subject  be 
Of  love,  and  honour's  complete  history  ; 
Your  eyes  were  never  yet  let  in  to  see 
The  majesty  and  riches  of  the  mind. 
But  dwell  in  darkness  ;  for  your  god  is  bUnd. 


George 
Chapman 

1557— 1^34 


XLI 


T  SAW  the  object  of  my  pining  thought 

Within  a  garden  of  sweet  Nature's  placing  : 
Wherein  an  arbour  artificial  wrought, 
By  workman's  wondrous  skill  the  garden  gracing. 
Did  boast  his  glory,  glory  far  renowned. 
For  in  his  shady  boughs  my  mistress  slept : 
And  with  a  garland  of  his  branches  crowned, 
Her  dainty  forehead  from  the  sun  ykept. 
Imperious  Love  upon  her  eyelids  tending, 
Playing  his  wanton  sports  at  every  beck, 
And  into'every  finest  limb  descending, 
From  eyes  to  lips,  from  lips  to  ivory  neck ; 
And  every  limb  supplied,  and  t'  every  part 
Had  free  access,  but  durst  not  touch  her  heart. 


Thomas 
Watson 

1560 — 1592 


2  2  A  Treasury  of 

XLII 
FRANCESCO'S      SONNET, 

CALLED    HIS    PARTING    HLOW. 

Robert  Greene    73  EASON,  that  4ong  in  prison  of  my  will 
1561 V— 1592       ■'-^     Hast  wept  thy  mistress'  wants  and  loss  of  time, 
Thy  wonted  siege  of  honour  safely  climb  ; 
To  thee  I  yield  as  guilty  of  mine  ill. 
Lo,  fettered  in  their  tears,  mine  eyes  are  prest 
To  pay  due  homage  to  their  native  guide  : 
My  Avretched  heart,  wounded  with  bad  betide. 
To  crave  his  peace  from  reason  is  addrest. 
My  thoughts  ashamed,  since  by  themselves  consumed. 
Have  done  their  duty  to  repentant  wit : 
Ashamed  of  all,  sweet  guide,  I  sorry  sit, 
To  see  in  youth  how  I  too  far  presumed. 
Thus  he  whom  love  and  error  did  betray 
Subscribes  to  thee  and  takes  the  better  way. 


XLIII 

A 1  THAT  meant  the  poets  in  invective  verse 

To  sing  Medea's  shame,  and  Scylla's  pride, 
Calypso's  charms  by  which  so  many  died  ? 
Only  for  this  their  vices  they  rehearse  : 
That  curious  wits  which  in  the  world  converse, 
May  shun  the  dangers  and  enticing  shows 
Of  such  false  sirens,  those  home-breeding  foes, 
That  from  their  eyes  their  venom  do  disperse. 
So  soon  kills  not  the  basilisk  with  sight  ; 
The  viper's  tooth  is  not  so  venomous  ; 
The  adder's  tongue  not  half  so  dangerou^, 
As  they  that  bear  the  shadow  of  delight. 
Who  chain  blind  youths  in  trammels  of  their  hair, 
Till  waste  brings  woe,  and  sorrow  hastes  despair. 


English  Sonnets  23 

XLIV 

T    OOK,  Delia,  how  \v'  esteem  the  half-blown  rose,    Samuel  Daxiei, 

■^     The  image  of  thy  blush  and  summer's  honour,       1562— 1619 

Whilst  yet  her  tender  bud  doth  undisclose 

That  full  of  beauty  Time  bestows  upon  her. 

No  sooner  spreads  her  glory  in  the  air, 

But  straight  her  wide-blown  pomp  comes  to  decline  ; 

She  then  is  scorned  that  late  adorned  the  fair  ; 

So  fade  the  roses  of  those  cheeks  of  thine. 

No  April  can  revive  thy  withered  flowers, 

Whose  springing  grace  adorns  thy  glory  now ; 

Swift  speedy  Time,  feathered  with  flying  hours, 

Dissolves  the  beauty  of  the  fairest  brow. 

Then  do  not  thou  such  treasure  waste  in  vain, 

But  love  now  whilst  thou  mayst  be  loved  again. 


XLV 

"DEAUTY,  sweet  Love,  is  like  the  morning  dew, 

Whose  short  refresh  upon  the  tender  green 
Cheers  for  a  time  but  till  the  sun  doth  shew, 
And  straight  'tis  gone  as  it  had  never  been. 
Soon  doth  it  fade  that  makes  the  fairest  flourish. 
Short  is  the  glory  of  the  blushing  rose ; 
The  hue  which  thou  so  carefully  dost  nourish. 
Yet  which  at  length  thou  must  be  forced  to  lose. 
When  thou,  surcharged  with  burthen  of  thy  years, 
Shalt  bend  thy  wrinkles  homeward  to  the  earth. 
And  that  in  beauty's  lease,  expired,  appears 
The  date  of  age,  the  calends  of  our  death, — 
But  ah,  no  more  ! — this  must  not  be  foretold  ; 
For  women  grieve  to  think  they  must  be  old. 


24  A  Treasury  of 

XLVI 


Samuel  Daniel 


/^ARE-CHARMER  Sleep,  son  of  the  sable  Night, 
1562-1619       v-     Brother  to  Death,  in  silent  darkness  born, 
Relieve  my  languish,  and  restore  the  light ; 
With  dark  forgetting  of  my  care  return, 
And  let  the  day  be  time  enough  to  mourn 
The  shipwreck  of  my  ill-adventured  youth  : 
Let  waking  eyes  suffice  to  wail  their  scorn, 
Without  the  torment  of  the  night's  untruth. 
Cease,  dreams,  the  images  of  day-desires, 
To  model  forth  the  passions  of  the  morrow  ; 
Never  let  rising  Sun  approve  you  liars. 
To  add  more  grief  to  aggravate  my  sorrow  : 
Still  let  me  sleep,  embracing  clouds  in  vain, 
And  never  wake  to  feel  the  day's  disdain. 


Drayton 
1563— 1631 


XLVII 


Michael        T^EAR,  why  should  you  Command  me  to  my  rest, 
"^     When  now  the  night  doth  summon  all  to  sleep  ? 


Methinks  this  time  becometh  lovers  best  : 
Night  was  ordained  together  friends  to  keep. 
How  happy  are  all  other  living  things. 
Which  though  the  day  disjoin  by  several  flight, 
The  quiet  Evening  yet  together  brings. 
And  each  returns  unto  his  love  at  night ! 
O  thou  that  art  so  courteous  unto  all. 
Why  shouldst  thou,  Night,  abuse  me  only  thus, 
That  every  creature  to  his  kind  dost  call. 
And  yet  'tis  thou  dost  only  sever  us  ? 
Well  could  I  wish  it  would  be  ever  day, 
If  when  night  comes,  you  bid  me  go  away. 


English  Sonnets  25 

XLVIII 

OINCE  there's  no  help,  come  let  us  kiss  and  part, —       dravton 
Nay  I  have  done,  you  get  no  more  of  me  ;  ^   —^^  ^ 

And  I  am  glad,  yea  glad  with  all  my  heart, 
That  thus  so  cleanly  I  myself  can  free  ; 
ghake  hands  for  ever,  cancel  all  our  vows, 
And  when  we  meet  at  any  time  again, 
Be  it  not  seen  in  either  of  our  brows 
That  we  one  jot  of  former  love  retain. 
Now  at  the  last  gasp  of  Love's  latest  breath, 
When,  his  pulse  failing,  Passion  speechless  lies. 
When  Faith  is  kneeling  by  his  bed  of  death, 
And  Innocence  is  closing  up  his  eyes, — 
Now  if  thou  would'st,  when  all  have  given  him  over, 
From  death  to  life  thou  might'st  him  yet  recover  ! 


XLIX 

"1^7" ERE  I  as  base  as  is  the  lowly  plain,  sylve"ter 

And  you,  my  Love,  as  high  as  heaven  above,       156^618 
Yet  should  the  thoughts  of  me  your  humble  swain 
Ascend  to  heaven  in  honour  of  my  Love. 
Were  I  as  high  as  heaven  above  the  plain, 
And  you,  my  Love,  as  humble  and  as  low 
As  are  the  deepest  bottoms  of  the  main, 
Whereso'er  you  were,  with  you  my  love  should  go. 
Were  you  the  earth,  dear  Love,  and  I  the  skies. 
My  love  should  shine  on  you  like  to  the  sun, 
And  look  upon  you  with  ten  thousand  eyes. 
Till  heaven  waxed  blind,  and  till  the  world  were  done. 
Whereso'er  I  am,  below  or  else  above  you, 
Whereso'er  you  are,  my  heart  shall  truly  love  you. 


1564 — i6i6 


26  A  Treasury  of 


(8) 
William         TV /T  USIC  to  hear,  whv  hear'st  thou  music  sadly  ? 

oH AKSPEARE  ^Lj  I 

—  Sweets  with  sweets  war  not,  joy  deUghts  in  joy. 

Why  lov'st  thou  that  which  thou  receiv'st  not  gladly, 
Or  else  receiv'st  with  pleasure  thine  annoy  ?  * 

If  the  true  concord  Of  well-tuned  sounds, 
By  unions  married,  do  offend  thine  ear, 
They  do  but  sweetly  chide  thee,  who  confounds 
In  singleness  the  parts  that  thou  shouldst  bear. 
Mark  how  one  string,  sweet  husband  to  another. 
Strikes  each  in  each  by  mutual  ordering. 
Resembling  sire  and  child  and  happy  mother, 
Who,  all  in  one,  one  pleasing  note  do  sing  : 
Whose  speechless  song,  being  many,  seeming  one, 
Sings  this  to  thee  :  '  thou  single  wilt  prove  none.' 


LI 

(12) 

"\  ^  THEN  I  do  count  the  clock  that  tells  the  time. 
And  see  the  brave  day  sunk  in  hideous  night ; 
When  I  behold  the  violet  past  prime, 
And  sable  curls  all  silvered  o'er  with  white  ; 
When  lofty  trees  I  see  barren  of  leaves. 
Which  erst  from  heat  did  canopy  the  herd, 
And  summer's  green,  all  girded  up  in  sheaves. 
Borne  on  the  bier  with  white  and  bristly  beard  : 
Then  of  thy  beauty  do  I  question  make, 
That  thou  among  the  wastes  of  time  must  go, 
Since  sweets  and  beauties  do  themselves  forsake 
And  die  as  fast  as  they  see  others  grow  ; 
And  nothing  'gainst  Time's  scythe  can  make  defence 
Save  breed,  to  brave  him  when  he  takes  thee  hence. 


1564 — i6i6 


English  Sonnets  27  j 

I 

LII 

WHEN  I  consider  everythins;  that  grows  William  j 

•'  '-'     _  °  Shakspeare 

Holds  in  perfection  but  a  little  moment,  —  ' 

That  this  huge  stage  presenteth  nought  but  shows 

Whereon  the  stars  in  secret  influence  comment ; 

When  I  perceive  that  men  as  plants  increase, 

Cheered  and  checked  even  by  the  self-same  sky. 

Vaunt  in  their  youthful  sap,  at  height  decrease, 

And  wear  their  brave  state  out  of  memory  : 

Then  the  conceit  of  this  inconstant  stay 

Sets  you  most  rich  in  youth  before  my  sight. 

Where  wasteful  Time  debateth  with  Decay, 

To  change  your  day  of  youth  to  sullied  night ; 

And  all  in  war  with  Time  for  love  of  you, 

As  he  takes  from  you,  I  engraft  you  new. 


LIII 

(17) 

"X  7[ /"HO  will  believe  my  verse  in  time  to  come, 

If  it  were  filled  with  your  most  high  deserts  ? 
Though  yet,  heaven  knows,  it  is  but  as  a  tomb 
Which  hides  your  life  and  show's  not  half  your  parts. 
If  I  could  write  the  beauty  of  your  eyes 
And  in  fresh  numbers  number  all  your  graces. 
The  age  to  come  would  say,  *  This  poet  lies  ; 
Such  heavenly  touches  ne'er  touched  earthly  faces.* 
So  should  my  papers,  yellowed  with  their  age, 
Be  scorned  like  old  men  of  less  truth  than  tongue, 
And  your  true  rights  be  termed  a  poet's  rage. 
And  stretched  metre  of  an  antique  song : 
But  were  some  child  of  yours  alive  that  time, 
You  should  live  twice, — in  it,  and  in  my  rime. 


28  A  Treasury  of 

LIV 

(i8)  i 

William         OHALL  I  comparc  thee  to  a  summer's  day  ?  i 

Shakspeare  ^^  *■  ■'  ■( 

—  Thou  art  more  lovely  and  more  temperate :  ,       ; 

1564—1616  .  ^  ^  •       I 

Rough  wmds  do  shake  the  darlmg  buds  of  May, 

And  summer's  lease  hath  all  too  short  a  date  :  ' 

Sometime  too  hot  the  eye  of  heaven  shines, 

And  often  is  his  gold  complexion  dimmed ; 

And  every  fair  from  fair  sometime  declines, 

By  chance  or  nature's  changing  course  untrimmed  ;  , 

But  thy  eternal  summer  shall  not  fade  I 

Nor  lose  possession  of  that  fair  thou  ow'st ;  i 

Nor  shall  Death  brag  thou  wander'st  in  his  shade,  \ 

When  in  eternal  lines  to  time  thou  grow'st.: 

So  long  as  men  can  breathe  or  eyes  can  see,  j 

So  long  lives  this,  and  this  gives  life  to  thee. 


LV  , 

(21)  I 

00  is  it  not  with  me  as  with  that  Muse, 

Stirred  by  a  painted  beauty  to  his  verse,  i 

Who  heaven  itself  for  ornament  doth  use,  ^ 
And  every  fair  with  his  fair  doth  rehearse  ; 

Making  a  couplement  of  proud  compare  j 

With  sun  and  moon,  with  earth  and  sea's  rich  gems,  \ 

With  April's  first-born  flowers,  and  all  things  rare  ] 

That  heaven's  air  in  this  huge  rondure  hems.  ; 

0  let  me,  true  in  love,  but  truly  write. 
And  then  believe  me,  my  Love  is  as  fair 

As  any  mother's  child,  though  not  so  bright  ■■. 

As  those  gold  candles  fixed  in  heaven's  air  :  ; 

Let  them  say  more  that  like  of  hearsay  well,  ' 

1  will  not  praise  that  purpose  not  to  sell.  " 


English  Sotmets  29 

LVI 

(  22  ) 

MY  glass  shall  not  persuade  me  I  am  old,  William 

°  '  SUAKSPEARE 

So  lonor  as  youth  and  thou  are  of  one  date  ;  — 

.      ,  1564— 1616 
But  when  ni  thee  time's  furrows  I  behold, 

Then  look  I  death  my  days  should  expiate. 

For  all  that  beauty  that  doth  cover  thee 

Is  but  the  seemly  raiment  of  my  heart, 

Which  in  thy  breast  doth  live,  as  thine  in  me  : 

How  can  I  then  be  elder  than  thou  art  ? 

O,  therefore.  Love,  be  of  thyself  so  wary 

As  I,  not  for  myself,  but  for  thee  will ; 

Bearing  thy  heart,  which  I  will  keep  so  chary 

As  tender  nurse  her  babe  from  faring  ill. 

Presume  not  on  thy  heart  when  mine  is  slain ; 

Thou  gav'st  me  thine,  not  to  give  back  again. 


L 


LVII 
(  25  ) 

ET  those  who  ^e  in  favour  with  their  stars 
Of  public  honour  and  proud  titles  boast, 
Whilst  I,  whom  fortune  of  such  triumph  bars, 
Unlooked  for  joy  in  that  I  honour  most. 
Great  princes'  favourites  their  fair  leaves  spread 
But  as  the  marigold  at  the  sun's  eye, 
And  in  themselves  their  pride  lies  buried, 
For  at  a  frown  they  in  their  glory  die. 
The  painful  warrior  famoused  for  fight, 
After  a  thousand  victories,,  once  foiled, 
Is  from  the  book  of  honour  razed  quite, 
And  all  the  rest  forgot  for  which  he  toiled  ; 
Then  happy  I,  that  love  and  am  beloved 
Where  I  may  not  remove  nor  be  removed. 


$o  A  Treasury  of 

LVIII  ■ 
(27) 

William        T  T  /"E ARY  With  toil,  I  hastc  me  to  mv  bed, 

ShaKSPEARE  VVrT-.li  /-i-i  -1  1--1 

—  1  he  dear  repose  for  hmbs  with  travel  tired  ; 

But  then  begins  a  journey  in  my  head, 
To  work  my  mind,  when  body's  work's  expired  : 
For  then  my  thoughts,  from  far  where  I  abide. 
Intend  a  zealous  pilgrimage  to  thee, 
And  keep  my  drooping  eyelids  open  wide. 
Looking  on  darkness  which  the  blind  do  see  : 
Save  that  my  soul's  imaginary  sight 
Presents  thy  shadow  to  my  sightless  view. 
Which,  like  a  jewel  hung  in  ghastly  night. 
Makes  black  Night  beauteous  and  her  old  face  new. 
Lo  !  thus,  by  day  my  limbs,  by  night  my  mind 
For  thee  and  for  myself  no  quiet  find. 


LIX 

(29) 

"\ ^THEN  in  disgrace  with  fo^ine  and  men's  eyes, 

I  all  alone  bevveep  my  outcast  state, 
And  trouble  deaf  heaven  with  my  bootless  cries. 
And  look  upon  myself  and  curse  my  fate. 
Wishing  me  like  to  one  more  rich  in  hope. 
Featured  like  him,  like  him  with  friends  possest, 
Desiring  this  man's  art  and  that  man's  scope. 
With  what  I  most  enjoy  contented  least ; 
Yet  in  these  thoughts  myself  almost  despising, 
Haply  I  think  on  thee, — and  then  my  state. 
Like  to  the  lark  at  break  of  day  arising 
From  sullen  earth,  sings  hymns  at  heaven's  gate  ; 
For  thy  sweet  love  remembered  such  wealth  brings, 
That  then  I  scorn  to  change  my  state  with  kings. 


w 


English  Sonnets  31 

(30) 
HEN  to  the  sessions  of  sweet  silent  thought  Jyl^"p'' 


I  summon  up  remembrance  of  things  past, 
I  sigh  the  lack  of  many  a  thing  I  sought, 
And  with  old  woes  new  wail  my  dear  time's  waste 
Then  can  I  drown  an  eye,  unused  to  flow, 
For  precious  friends  hid  in  death's  dateless  nigl!t, 
And  weep  afresh  love's  long-since-cancelled  woe, 
And  moan  the  expense  of  many  a  vanished  sight : 
Then  can  I  grieve  at  grievances  foregone. 
And  heavily  from  woe  to  woe  tell  o'er 
The  sad  account  of  fore-bemoaned  moan, 
Which  I  new  pay  as  if  not  paid  before. 
But  if  the  while  I  think  on  thee,  dear  friend, 
All  losses  are  restored  and  sorrows  end. 


LXI 

»  (31) 

'T'HY  bosom  is  endeared  with  all  hearts, 
-^      Which  I  by  lacking  have  supposed  dead. 
And  there  reigns  love  and  all  love's  loving  parts, 
And  all  those  friends  which  I  thought  buried. 
How  many  a  holy  and  obsequious  tear 
Hath  dear-religious  love  stolen  from  mine  eye 
As  interest  of  the  dead,  which  now  appear 
But  things  removed,  that  hidden  in  thee  lie  ! 
Thou  art  the  grave  where  buried  love  doth  live, 
Hung  with  the  trophies  of  my  lovers  gone. 
Who  all  their  parts  of  me  to  thqe  did  give  ; 
That  due  of  many  now  is  thine  alone  : 
Their  images  I  loved  I  view  in  thee. 
And  thou,  all  they,  hast  all  the  all  of  me. 


s?  Shakspkake 

1564 — I6I6 


William 
Shakspeare 

1564 — 16 16 


32  A  Treasury  of 

LXII 
(32) 

TF  thou  survive  my  well-contented  day, 

■^     When  that  cffiirl  Death  my  bones  with  dust  shall 


cover, 


And  shalt  by  fortune  once  more  re-survey 
These  poor  rude  lines  of  thy  deceased  lover, 
Compare  them  with  the  bettering  of  the  time  ; 
And  though  they  be  outstripped  by  every  pen, 
Reserve  them  for  my  love,  not  for  their  rime, 
Exceeded  by  the  height  of  happier  men. 
Oh  then  vouchsafe  me  but  this  loving  thought, — 
*  Had  my  friend's  Muse  grown  with  this  growing  age, 
A  dearer  birth  than  this  his  love  had  brought. 
To  march  in  ranks  of  better  equipage  ; 
But  since  he  died,  and  poets  better  prove. 
Theirs  for  their  style  I'll  read,  his  for  his  love.' 


LXIII 

F* 
ULL  many  a  glorious  morning  have  I  seen 
Flatter  the  mountain-tops  with  sovereign  eye. 
Kissing  with  golden  face  the  meadows  green. 
Gilding  pale  streams  with  heavenly  alchemy  ; 
Anon  permit  the  basest  clouds  to  ride 
With  ugly  rack  on  his  celestial  face. 
And  from  the  forlorn  world  his  visage  hide. 
Stealing  unseen  to  west  with  this  disgrace  : 
Even  so  my  sun  one  early  morn  did  shine 
With  all-triumphant  splendour  on  my  brow  ; 
But  out,  alack  !  he  was  but  one  hour  mine  ; 
The  region  cloud  hath  masked  him  from  me  now. 
Yet  him  for  this  my  love  no  whit  disdaineth  ; 
Suns  of  the  world    may  stain,  when  heaven's    sun 
staineth. 


English  Sonnets  2>Z 

LXIV 

(38) 
T  T  OW  can  my  Muse  want  subject  to  invent,  Shakspeare 

While  thou  dost  breathe,  that  pour'st  into  my       1564II7616 
verse 
Thine  own  sweet  argument,  too  excellent 
For  every  vulgar  paper  to  rehearse  ? 
Oh  give  thyself  the  thanks,  if  ought  in  me 
Worthy  perusal  stand  against  thy  sight ; 
For  who's  so  dumb  that  cannot  write  to  thee, 
When  thou  thyself  dost  give  invention  light  ? 
Be  thou  the  tenth  Muse,  ten  times  more  in  worth 
Than  those  old  nine  which  rimers  invocate  ; 
And  he  that  calls  on  thee,  let  him  bring  forth 
Eternal  numbers  to  outlive  long  date. 
If  my  slight  Muse  do  please  these  curious  days, 
The  pain  be  mine,  but  thine  shall  be  the  praise. 

LXV 

(5O 

00  am  I  as  the  rich  whose  blessed  key 

Can  bring  him  to  his  sweet  up-locked  treasure, 
The  which  he  will  not  every  hour  survey, 
For  blunting  the  fine  point  of  seldom  pleasure. 
Therefore  are  feasts  so  solemn  and  so  rare, 
Since,  seldom  coming,  in  the  long  year  set. 
Like  stones  of  worth  they  thinly  placed  are, 
Or  captain  jewels  in  the  carcanet. 
So  is  the  time  that  keeps  you,  as  my  chest. 
Or  as  the  wardrobe  which  the  robe  doth  hide, 
To  make  some  special  instant  special-blest, 
By  new  unfolding  his  imprisoned  pride. 
Blessed  are  you,  whose  worthiness  gives  scope, 
Being  had,  to  triumph,  being  lacked,  to  hope. 

D 


William 

Shakspeare 

1564 — I6I6 


34  A  Treasury  of 

LXVI 

(54) 

/^H  how  much  more  doth  beauty  beauteous  seem 

^^^     By  that  sweet  ornament  which  truth  doth  give ! 

The  rose  looks  fair,  but  fairer  we  it  deem 

For  that  sweet  odour  which  doth  in  it  Hve. 

The  canker-blooms  have  full  as  deep  a  dye 

As  the  perfumed  tincture  of  the  roses, 

Hang  on  such  thorns,  and  play  as  wantonly 

When  summer's  breath  their  masked  buds  discloses  : 

But  for  their  virtue  only  is  their  show, 

They  live  unwooed,  and  unrespected  fade — 

Die  to  themselves.     Sweet  roses  do  not  so  ; 

Of  their  sweet  deaths  are  sweetest  odours  made  : 

And  so  of  you,  beauteous  and  lovely  youth. 

When  that  shall  vade,  by  verse  distils  your  truth. 


LXVII 

(55) 
"\TOT  marble,  nor  the  gilded  monuments 

Of  princes,  shall  outlive  this  powerful  rime  ; 
But  you  shall  shine  more  bright  in  these  contents 
Than  unswept  stone  •besmeared  with  sluttish  time. 
When  wasteful  war  shall  statues  overturn. 
And  broils  root  out  the  work  of  masonry. 
Nor  Mars  his  sword  nor  war's  quick  fire  shall  burn 
The  living  record  of  your  memory. 
'Gainst  death  and  all-oblivious  enmity 
Shall  you  pace  forth  ;  your  praise  shall  still  find  room 
Even  in  the  eyes  of  all  posterity 
That  wear  this  world  out  to  the  ending  doom. 
So,  till  the  judgment  that  yourself  arise, 
You  live  in  this,  and  dwell  in  lovers'  eyes. 


Shakspeare 
1564 — I6I6 


JEngHsh  Sonnets  35 

LXVIII 

<57) 

BEING  your  slave,  what  should  I  do  but  tend  William 

Upon  the  hours  and  times  of  your  desire  ? 
I  have  no  precious  time  at  all  to  spend, 
Nor  services  to  do,  till  you  require. 
Nor  dare  I  chide  the  world-without-end  hour. 
Whilst  I,  my  sovereign,  watch  the  clock  for  you, 
Nor  think  the  bitterness  of  absence  sour, 
When  you  have  bid  your  servant  once  adieu  ; 
Nor  dare  I  question  with  my  jealous  thought 
Where  you  may  be,  or  your  affairs  suppose. 
But,  like  a  sad  slave,  stay  and  think  of  nought 
Save  where  you  are,  how  happy  you  make  those. 
So  true  a  fool  is  love,  that  in  your  will 
Though  you  do  anything,  he  thinks  no  ill. 


L 


LXIX 
(60) 

IKE  as  the  waves  make  towards  the  pebbled  shore, 


So  do  our  minutes  hasten  to  their  end  ; 
Each  changing  place  with  that  which  goes  before, 
In  sequent  toil  all  forwards  do  contend. 
Nativity,  once  in  the  main  of  light, 
Crawls  to  maturity,  wherewith  being  crowned, 
Crooked  eclipses  'gainst  his  glory  fight. 
And  Time,  that  gave,  doth  now  his  gift  confound. 
Time  doth  transfix  the  flourish  set  on  youth, 
And  delves  the  parallels  in  beauty's  brow, 
Feeds  on  the  rarities  of  nature's  truth, 
And  nothing  stands  but  for  his  scythe  to  mow  : 
And  yet  to  times  in  hope  my  verse  shall  stand, 
Praising  thy  worth,  despite  his  cruel  hand. 


William 
Shakspeare 

1564 — i6i5 


36  A  Treasury  of  \ 

LXX  ; 

(61)  I 

TS  it  thy  will  thy  image  should  keep  open  : 

My  heavy  eyelids  to  the  weary  night  ?  j 

Dost  thou  desire  my  slumbers  should  be  broken, 
While  shadows  like  to  thee  do  mock  my  sight  ? 
Is  it  thy  spirit  that  thou  send'st  from  thee 
So  far  from  home  into  my  deeds  to  pry  ; 
To  find  out  shames  and  idle  hours  in  me, 
The  scope  and  tenour  of  thy  jealousy  ? 
O,  no  !  thy  love,  though  much,  is  not  so  great : 
It  is  my  love  that  keeps  mine  eye  awake  ; 
Mine  own  true  love  that  doth  my  rest  defeat, 
To  play  the  watchman  ever  for  thy  sake  : 
For  thee  watch  I  whilst  thou  dost  wake  elsewhere, 
From  me  far  off,  with  others  all  too  near. 


LXXI 

A  GAINST  my  Love  shall  be,  as  I  am  now. 

With  Time's  injurious  hand  crushed  and  o'er- 
worn  ; 
When  hours  have  drained  his  blood  and  filled  his  brow 
With  lines  and  wrinkles  ;   when  his  youthful  morn 
Hath  travelled  on  to  age's  steepy  night ; 
And  all  those  beauties  whereof  now  he's  king 
Are  vanishing,  or  vanished  out  of  sight, 
Stealing  away  the  treasure  of  his  spring, — 
For  such  a  time  do  I  now  fortify 
Against  confounding  age's  cruel  knife. 
That  he  shall  never  cut  from  memory 
My  sweet  Love's  beauty,  though  my  lover's  life. 
His  beauty  shall  in  these  black  lines  be  seen, 
And  they  shall  live,  and  he  in  them,  still  green. 


English  Sonnets  37 

LXXII 
(64) 

WHEN  I  have  seen  by  Time's  fell  hand  defaced  William 

,  .  ,        .     ,  Shakspeare 

The  rich  proud  cost  of  outworn  buried  age  ;  — 

1  1564 — 1616 
When  sometime  lofty  towers  I  see  down-razed, 

And  brass  eternal  slave  to  mortal  rage  ; 

When  I  have  seen  the  hungry  ocean  gain 

Advantage  on  the  kingdom  of  the  shore, 

And  the  firm  soil  win  of  the  watery  main. 

Increasing  store  with  loss,  and  loss  with  store ; 

When  I  have  seen  such  interchange  of  state, 

Or  state  itself  confounded  to  decay  ; 

Ruin  hath  taught  me  thus  to  ruminate. 

That  Time  vv^ill  come  and  take  my  Love  away. 

This  thought  is  as  a  death,  which  cannot  choose 

But  weep  to  have  that  which  it  fears  to  lose. 


LXXIII 

(65) 

OINCE  brass,  nor  stone,  nor  earth,  nor  boundless  sea, 

But  sad  mortality  o'er- sways  their  power, 
How  with  this  rage  shall  beauty  hold  a  plea. 
Whose  action  is  no  stronger  than  a  flower  ? 
O,  how  shall  summer's  honey  breath  hold  out 
Against  the  wreckful  siege  of  battering  days. 
When  rocks  impregnable  are  not  so  stout, 
Nor  gates  of  steel  so  strong,  but  time  decays  ? 
O  fearful  meditation  !  where,  alack, 
Shall  Time's  best  jewel  from  Time's  chest  lie  hid  ? 
Or  what  strong  hand  can  hold  his  swift  foot  back  ? 
Or  who  his  spoil  of  beauty  can  forbid  ? 
O,  none,  unless  this  miracle  have  might. 
That  in  black  ink  my  Love  may  still  shine  bright. 


38     ■  A  Treasury  of 


Shakspeare  I 


1564 — I6I6 


LXXIV 

(66) 

William        ^  |  "IRED  With  all  thcsc,  for  restful  death  I  cry, — 
As,  to  behold  desert  a  beggar  born, 
And  needy  nothing  trimmed  in  jollity, 
And  purest  faith  unhappily  forsworn, 
And  gilded  honour  shamefully  misplaced. 
And  maiden  virtue  rudely  strumpeted, 
And  right  perfection  wrongfully  disgraced, 
And  strength  by  limping  sway  disabled, 
And  art  made  tongue-tied  by  authority, 
And  folly,  doctor-like,  controlling  skill, 
And  simple  truth  miscalled  simplicity, 
And  captive  good  attending  captain  ill : 
Tired  with  all  these,  from  these  would  I  be  gone,- 
Save  that,  to  die,  I  leave  my  Love  alone. 


LXXV 

(70) 

'T^  HAT  thou  art  blamed  shall  not  be  thy  defect. 

For  slander's  mark  was  ever  yet  the  fair ; 
The  ornament  of  beauty  is  suspect, 
A  crow  that  flies  in  heaven's  sweetest  air. 
So  thou  be  good,  slander  doth  but  approve 
Thy  worth  the  greater,  being  wooed  of  Time  ; 
For  canker  vice  the  sweetest  buds  doth  love. 
And  thou  present'st  a  puiie  unstained  prime. 
Thou  hast  passed  by  the  ambush  of  young  days. 
Either  not  assailed,  or  victor  being  charged  ; 
Yet  this  thy  praise  cannot  be  so  thy  praise. 
To  tie  up  envy,  evermore  enlarged  : 
If  some  suspect  of  ill  masked  not  thy  show. 
Then  thou  alone  kingdoms  of  hearts  shouldst  owe. 


English  Sonnets  39 

LXXVI 

(71) 


V 


1564 — I6I6 


No  longer  mourn  for  me  when  I  am  dead  William 

_,,  ,     ,,  1  1        ^     ,  11        1     11  Shakspeare 

Than  you  shall  hear  the  ^irly  sullen  bell 

Give  warning;  to  the  world  that  I  am  fled 

From  this  vile  world,  with  vilest  worms  to  dwell : 

Nay,  if  you  read  this  line,  remember  not 

The  hand  that  writ  it  ;  for  I  love  you  so 

That  I  in  your  sweet  thoughts  would  be  forgot 

If  thinking  on  me  then  should  make  you  woe. 

O,  if,  I  say,  you  look  upon  this  verse 

When  I  perhaps  compoimded  am  with  clay. 

Do  not  so  much  as  my  poor  name  rehearse, 

But  let  your  love  even  with  my  life  decay, — 

Lest  the  wise  world  should  look  into  your  moan, 

And  mock  you  with  me  after  I  am  gone. 


LXXVII                                              .  : 

(73)  I 

T^HAT  time  of  year  thou  mayst  in  me  behold  ; 

When  yellow  leaves,  or  none,  or  few,  do  hang  \ 

Upon  those  boughs  which  shake  against  the  cold,  ■: 
Bare  ruined  choirs  where  late  the  sweet  birds  sang  : 

In  me  thou  see'st  the  twilight  of  such  day  ; 

As  after  sunset  fadeth  in  the  west,  i 

Which  by  and  by  black  night  doth  take  away,  j 

Death's  setond  self,  that  seals  up  all  in  rest.  ' 

In  me  thou  see'st  the  glowing  of  such  fire  .j 

That  on  the  ashes  of  his  youth  doth  lie  \ 

As  the  death-bed  whereon  it  must  expire,  i 

Consumed  with  that  which  it  was  nourished  by  : —  j 

This  thou  perceiv'st,  which  makes  thy  love  more  strong,  ] 

To  love  that  well  which  thou  must  leave  ere  long.  I 


40  A  Treasury  of 

LXXVIII 

(74) 
William        "DUT  be  Contented  :  when  that  fell  arrest 

ShAKSPEARE  IJ         ,,^.    ,  ,,    ,        •,       1        n 

—  ■'^     Without  all  ball  shall  carry  me  away, 

^^  ^~^  '         My  life  hath  in  this  line  some  interest, 

Which  for  memorial  still  with  thee  shall  stay. 

When  thou  reviewest  this,  thou  dost  review 

The  very  part  was  consecrate  to  thee  : 

The  earth  can  have  but  earth,  which  is  his  due  ; 

My  spirit  is  thine,  the  better  part  of  me  : 

So  then  thou  hast  but  lost  -the  dregs  of  life. 

The  prey  of  worms,  my  body  being  dead, 

The  coward  conquest  of  a  wretch's  knife, 

Too  base  of  thee  to  be  remembered. 

The  worth  of  that  is  that  which  it  contains. 

And  that  is  this,  and  this  with  thee  remains. 


W 


•LXXIX 
(76) 

HY  is  my  verse  so  barren  of  new  pride  ? 


So  far  from  variation  or  quick  change  ? 
Why  with  the  time  do  I  not  glance  aside 
To  new-found  methods  and  to  compounds  strange  ? 
Why  write  I  still  all  one,  ever  the  same. 
And  keep  invention  in  a  noted  weed, 
That  every  word  doth  almost  tell  my  name, 
Showing  their  birth  and  where  they  did  proceed  ? 
O,  know,  sweet  Love,  I  always  write  of  you, 
And  you  and  love  are  still  my  argument ; 
So  all  my  best  is  dressing  old  words  new, 
Spending  again  what  is  already  spent : 
For  as  the  sun  is  daily  new  and  old, 
So  is  my  love  still  telling  what  is  told. 


English  Sonnets  41 

LXXX 

(81) 

C\^  I  shall  live  your  epitaph  to  make,  SHrKs"EA'RE 

^^^     Or  you  survive  when  I  in  earth  am  rotten  ;  ^  6~6i6 

From  hence  your  memory  death  cannot  take, 

Although  in  me  each  part  will  be  forgotten. 

Your  name  from  hence  immortal  life  shall  have, 

Though  I,  once  gone,  to  all  the  world  must  die  : 

The  earth  can  yield  me  but  a  common  grave, 

When  you  entombed  in  men's  eyes  shall  lie. 

Your  monument  shall  be  my  gentle  verse, 

Which  eyes  not  yet  created  shall  o'er-read. 

And  tongues  to  be  your  being  shall  rehearse 

When  all  the  breathers  of  this  world  are  dead  ; 

You  still  shall  live — such  virtue  hath  my  pen — 

Where  breath  most  breathes, — even  in  the  mouths  of  men. 


LXXXI 

(87)  . 

» 

T7  AREWELL !  thou  art  too  dear  for  my  possessing, 

And  like  enough  thou  know'st  thy  estimate  : 
The  charter  of  thy  worth  gives  thee  releasing ; 
My  bonds  in  thee  are  all  determinate. 
For  how  do  I  hold  thee  but  by  thy  granting  ? 
And  for  that  riches  where  is  my  deserving  ? 
The  cause  of  this  fair  gift  in  me  is  wanting. 
And  so  my  patent  back  again  is  swerving. 
Thyself  thou  gav'st,  thy  own  worth  then  not  knowing. 
Or  me,  to  whom  thou  gav'st  it,  else  mistaking  ; 
So  thy  great  gift,  upon  misprision  growing. 
Comes  home  again,  on  better  judgment  making. 
Thus  have  I  had  thee,  as  a  dream  doth  flatter ; 
In  sleep  a  king,  but,  waking,  no  such  matter. 


'42  A  T}-easiiry  of 

LXXXII 

(90) 
William        H^HEN  hate  me  when  thou  wilt ;  if  ever,  now  ; 

Shakspeare  I 

— ■  Now,  while  the  world  is  bent  my  deeds  to  cross, 

1564— 1616  '  .  -^  ' 

Join  with  the  spite  of  fortune,  make  me  bow, 

And  do  not  drop  in  for  an  after-loss  : 

Ah,  do  not,  when  my  heart  hath  'scaped  this  sorrow, 

Come  in  the  rearward  of  a  conquered  woe  ; 

Give  not  a  windy  night  a  rainy  morrow, 

To  linger  out  a  purposed  overthrow. 

If  thou  wilt  leave  me,  do  not  leave  me  last, 

When  other  petty  griefs  have  done  their  spite, 

But  in  the  onset  come  ;  so  shall  I  taste 

At  first  the  very  worst  of  fortune's  might ; 

And  other  strains  of  woe,  which  now  seem  woe, 

Compared  with  loss  of  thee  will  not  seem  so. 


LXXXIII  .  1 

(91)  \ 

OOME  glory  in  their  birth,  some  in  their  skill. 

Some  in  their  wealth,  some  in  their  body's  force,  j 

Some  in  their  garments,  though  new-fangled  ill,  | 

Some  in  their  hawks  and  hounds,  some  in  their  horse  ; 
And  every  humour  hath  his  adjunct  pleasure. 
Wherein  it  finds  a  joy  above  the  rest : 

But  these  particulars  are  not  my  measure  ;  \ 

All  these  I  better  in  one  general  best.  j 

Thy  love  is  better  than  high  birth  to  me,  ; 

Richer  than  wealth,  prouder  than  garments'  cost, 
Of  more  delight  than  hawks  or  horses  be  ;  \ 

And  having  thee,  of  all  men's  pride  I  boast  : 
Wretched  in  this  alone,  that  thou  mayst  take  \ 

All  this  away,  and  me  most  wretched  make.  \ 


1564 — i6i6 


English  Sonnets  43 

LXXXIV 

(92) 

BUT  do  thy  worst  to  steal  thyself  away,  William 

Shakspeare 
For  term  of  life  thou  art  assured  mine, 

And  life  no  longer  than  thy  love  will  stay, 

For  it  depends  upon  that  love  of  thine. 

Then  need  I  not  to  fear  the  worst  of  wrongs. 

When  in  the  least  of  them  my  life  hath  end. 

1  see  a  better  state  to  me  belongs 

Than  that  which  on  thy  humour  doth  depend  ; 

Thou  canst  not  vex  me  with  inconstant  mind, 

Since  that  my  life  on  thy  revolt  doth  lie. 

Oh  what  a  happy  title  do  I  find, 

Happy  to  have  thy  love,  happy  to  die  ! 

But  what's  so  blessed-fair  that  fears  no  blot  ? 

Thou  mayst  be  false,  and  yet  I  know  it  not. 


LXXXV 

(93) 

00  shall  I  live,  supposing  thou  art  true, 

Like  a  deceived  husband  ;  so  love's  face 
May  still  seem  love  to  me,  though  altered  new  ; 
Thy  looks  with  me,  thy  heart  in  other  place  : 
For  there  can  live  no  hatred  in  thine  eye, 
Therefore  in  that  I  cannot  know  thy  change. 
In  many's  looks  the  false  heart's  history 
Is  writ  in  moods  and  frowns  and  wrinkles  strange  ; 
But  heaven  in  thy  creation  did  decree 
That  in  thy  face  sweet  love  should  ever  dwell ; 
Whate'er  thy  thoughts  or  thy  heart's  workings  be. 
Thy  looks  should  nothing  thence  but  sweetness  tell. 
How  like  Eve's  apple  doth  thy  beauty  grow, 
If  thy  sweet  virtue  answer  not  thy  show  ! 


44  A  Treasury  of 


LXXXVI  j 


(94) 
William        nPHEY  that  have  powcr  to  hurt  and  will  do  none, 

ShAKSPEARE  I  ,1-1 

—  That  do  not  do  the  thing  they  most  do  show, 

1564 — 1616 

Who,  moving  others,  are  themselves  as  stone. 

Unmoved,  cold,  and  to  temptation  slow, — 

They  rightly  do  inherit  heaven's  graces 

Ana  husband  nature's  riches  from  expense  ; 

They  are  the  lords  and  owners  of  their  faces, 

Others  but  stewards  of  their  excellence. 

The  summer's  flower  is  to  the  summer  sweet, 

Though  to  itself  it  only  live  and  die  ; 

But  if  that  flower  with  base  infection  meet, 

The  basest  weed  outbraves  his  dignity  : 

Tor  sweetest  things  turn  sourest  by  their  deeds  ; 

Lilies  that  fester  smell  far  worse  than  weeds. 


LXXXVII 

(97) 
TJj'OW  like  a  winter  hath  my  absence  been 
•*^      From  thee,  the  pleasure  of  the  fleeting  year  ! 
What  freezings  have  I  felt,  what  dark  days  seen  ! 
What  old  December's  bareness  every  where  ! 
And  yet  this  time  removed  was  summer's  time  ; 
The  teeming  autumn,  big  with  rich  increase. 
Bearing  the  wanton  burthen  of  the  prime. 
Like  widowed  wombs  after  their  lords'  decease  : 
Yet  this  abundant  issue  seemed  to  me 
But  hope  of  orphans  and  unfathered  fruit ; 
For  summer  and  his  pleasures  wait  on  thee. 
And,  thou  away,  the  very  birds  are  mute  ; 
Or,  if  they  sing,  'tis  with  so  dull  a  cheer, 
That  leaves  look  pale,  dreading  the  winter's  near. 


English  Sonnets  45 

LXXXVIII 

(98) 

cf'Tit  in   tViP>  cnrincr 

Shakspeare 


ROM  you  have  I  been  absent  in  the  spring,  William 


F 

•^       When  proud-pied  April,  dressed  m  all  his  trnn,       ^  ^  _^^^^ 

Hath  put  a  spirit  of  youth  in  every  thing,  | 

That  heavy  Saturn  laughed  and  leaped  with  him.  j 

Yet  nor  the  lays  of  birds,  nor  the  sweet  smell  j 

Of  different  flowers  in  odour  and  in  hue  I 

Could  make  me  any  summer's  story  tell,  ; 

Or  from  their  proud  lap  pluck  them  where  they  grew  ;  ; 

Nor  did  I  wonder  at  the  lily's  white,  j 

Nor  praise  the  deep  vermilion  in  the  rose  ;  j 

They  were  but  sweet,  but  figures  of  delight,  | 

Drawn  after  you,  you  pattern  of  all  those.  j 

Yet  seemed  it  winter  still,  and,  you  away,  •; 

As  with  your  shadow  I  with  these  did  play.  ' 

I 

i 

LXXXIX 
(99) 

HTHE  forward  violet  thus  did  I  chide :  i 

-^       Sweet  thief,  whence  didst  thou  steal  thy  sweet  that  smells. 
If  not  from  my  Love's  breath  ?     The  purple  pride 
Which  on  thy  soft  cheek  for  complexion  dwells 
In  my  Love's  veins  thou  hast  too  grossly  dyed.  i 

The  lily  I  condemned  for  thy  hand,  \ 

And  buds  of  marjoram  had  stolen  thy  hair  : 

The  roses  fearfully  on  thorns  did  stand,  ] 

One  blushing  shame,  another  white  despair  ; 

A  third,  nor  red  nor  white,  had  stolen  of  both,  '■ 

And  to  his  robbery  had  annexed  thy  breath  ;  ; 

But,  for  his  theft,  in  pride  of  all  his  growth  ^ 

A  vengeful  canker  eat  him  up  to  death. 
More  flowers  I  noted,  yet  I  none  could  see 
But  sweet  or  colour  it  had  stolen  from  thee. 


46  A  Treasury  of 

xc 
(  102  ) 
William         TV  /f  Y  lovc  is  Strengthened,  though  more  weak 

Shakspeare  vI  '  o 

, — ^  ^  seeming  ; 

1564 — i6i6  *  ' 


m 


I  love  not  less,  though  less  the  show  appear  : 

That  love  is  merchandized  whose  rich  esteeming 

The  owner's  tongue  doth  publish  every  where. 

Our  love  was  new  and  then  but  in  the  spring 

When  I  was  wont  to  greet  it  with  my  lays, 

As  Philomel  in  summer's  front  doth  sing. 

And  stops  her  pipe  in  growth  of  riper  days  : 

Not  that  the  summer  is  less  pleasant  now 

Than  when  her  mournful  hymns  did  hush  the  night, 

But  that  wild  music  burthens  every  bough 

And  sweets  grown  common  lose  their  dear  delight. 

Therefore  like  her  I  sometime  hold  my  tongue. 

Because  I  would  not  dull  you  with  my  song. 

xci 

(  104  ) 

T^O  me,  fair  Friend,  you  never  can  be  old, 

For  as  you  were  when  first  your  eye  I  eyed, 
Such  seems  your  beauty  still.    *Three  winters  cold 
Have  from  the  forests  shook  three  summers'  pride, 
Three  beauteous  springs  to  yellow  autumn  turned 
In  process  of  the  seasons  have  I  seen, 
Three  April  perfumes  in  three  hot  Junes  burned. 
Since  first  I  saw  you  fresh,  which  yet  are  green. 
Ah  !  yet  doth  beauty,  like  a  dial-hand. 
Steal  from  his  figure,  and  no  pace  perceived  ; 
So  your  sweet  hue,  which  methinks  still  doth  stand. 
Hath  motion,  and  mine  eye  may  be  deceived  : 
For  fear  of  which,  hear  this,  thou  age  unbred, — 
Ere  you  were  born  was  beauty's  summer  dead. 


English  Sonnets  47 

xcii 

(105) 

T    ET  not  my  love  be  called  idolatry,  William 

-^     Nor  my  beloved  as  an  idol  show,  — 

Smce  all  alike  my  songs  and  praises  be 

To  one,  of  one,  still  such,  and  ever  so. 

Kind  is  my  Love  to-day,  to-morrow  kind, 

Still  constant  in  a  wondrous  excellence  ; 

Therefore  my  verse,  to  constancy  confined. 

One  thing  expressing,  leaves  out  difference. 

'  Fair,  kind,  and  true  '  is  all  my  argument, 

'  Fair,  kind,  and  true '  varying  to  other  words  ; 

And  in  this  change  is  my  invention  spent, 

Three  themes  in  one,  which  wondrous  scope  affords. 

'Fair,  kind,  and  true,'  have  often  lived  alone, 

Whictf  three  till  now  never  kept  seat  in  one. 


XCIII 

(  106  ) 

T  1[ /"HEN  in  the  chronicle  of  wasted  time 

I  see  descriptions  of  the  fairest  wights, 
And  beauty  making  beautiful  old  rime 
In  praise  of  ladies  dead  and  lovely  knights  ; 
Then,  in  the  blazon  of  sweet  beauty's  best, 
Of  hand,  of  foot,  of  lip,  of  eye,  of  brow, 
I  see  their  antique  pen  would  have  expressed 
Even  such  a  beauty  as  you  master  now. 
So  all  their  praises  are  but  prophedes 
Of  this  our  time,  all  you  prefiguring  ; 
And  for  they  looked  but  with  divining  eyes. 
They  had  not  skill  enough  your  worth  to  sing : 
For  we,  which  now  behold  these  present  days. 
Have  eyes  to  wonder,  but  lack  tongues  to  praise. 


1564 — i6i6 


48  A  Treasury  of 


Shakspeare         I^ 


XCIV 
(107) 

WiLUAM^^      IVT  OT  mine  own  fears,  nor  the  prophetic  soul 

Of  the  wide  world  dreaming  on  things  to  come 
Can  yet  the  lease  of  my  true  Love  controul, 
Supposed  as  forfeit  to  a  confined  doom. 
The  mortal  Moon  hath  her  eclipse  endured, 
And  the  sad  augurs  mock  their  own  presage ; 
Incertainties  now  crown  themselves  assured, 
And  peace  proclaims  olives  of  endless  age. 
Now  with  the  drops  of  this  most  balmy  time 
My  Love  looks  fresh,  and  Death  to  me  subscribes. 
Since,  spite  of  him,  I'll  live  in  this  poor  rime. 
While  he  insults  o'er  dull  and  speechless  tribes  : 
And  thou  in  this  shalt  find  thy  monument. 
When  tyrants'  crests  and  tombs  of  brass  are  Tspent. 


xcv 

(  109  ) 
/^  NEVER  say  that  I  was  false  of  heart, 
^"^     Though  absence  seemed  my  flame  to  qualify. 
As  easy  might  I  from  myself  depart 
As  from  my  soul,  which  in  thy  breast  doth  lie  : 
That  is  my  home  of  love  :  if  I  have  ranged, 
Like  him  that  travels  I  return  again. 
Just  to  the  time,  not  with  the  time  exchanged, — ' 
So  that  myself  bring  water  for  my  stain. 
Never  believe,  though  in  my  nature  reigned 
All  frailties  that  besiege  all  kinds  of  blood. 
That  it  could  so  preposterously  be  stained, 
To  leave  for  nothing  all  thy  sum  of  good ; 
For  nothing  this  wide  universe  I  call. 
Save  thou,  my  rose  ;  in  it  thou  art  my  all. 


English  Sonnets  49 

xcvi 
(no) 

ALAS,  'tis  true  I  have  gone  here  and  there  William 

*      1  1  ,/•  ,  ■,  •  Shakspeaee 

And  made  myself  a  motley  to  the  view,  — 

Gored  mine  own  thoughts,sold  cheap  what  is  most  dear,       ^5411 
Made  old  offences  of  affections  new '; 
Most  true  it  is  that  I  have  looked  on  truth 
Askance  and  strangely  :  but,  by  all  above, 
These  blenches  gave  my  heart  another  youth, 
And  worse  essays  proved  thee  my  best  of  love. 
Now  all  is  done,  have  what  shall  have  no  end : 
Mine  appetite  I  never  more  will  grind 
On  newer  proof,  to  try  an  older  friend, 
A  god  in  love,  to  whom  I  am  confined. 
Then  give  me  welcome,  next  my  heaven  the  best,  • 
Even  to  thy  pure  and  most  most  loving  breast. 


O 


XCVII 

(in) 
FOR  my  sake  do  you  with  Fortune  chide, 


The  guilty  goddess  of  my  harmful  deeds, 
That  did  not  better  for  my  life  provide 
Than  public  means  which  public  manners  breeds. 
Thence  comes  it  that  my  name  receives  a  brand, 
And  almost  thence  my  nature  is  subdued 
To  what  it  works  in,  like  the  dyer's  hand  : 
Pity  me  then,  and  wish  I  were  renewed  ; 
Whilst,  like  a  willing  patient,  I  will  drink 
Potions  of  eisel  'gainst  my  strong  infection ; 
No  bitterness  that  I  will  bitter  think, 
Nor  double  penance,  to  correct  correction. 
Pity  me  then,  dear  friend,  and  I  assure  ye 
Even  that  your  pity  is  enough  to  cure  me. 

£ 


50  A  Treasujy  of 

XCVIII 

(ii6) 
William         T    ET  me  not  to  the  marriage  of  true  minds 


Shakspeare 
1564 — I6I6 


'■b'- 


Admit  impediments.     Love  is  not  love 
Which  alters  when  it  alteration  finds, 
Or  bends  with  the  remover  to  remove  : 

0  no  !  it  is  an  ever-fixed  mark 

That  looks  on  tempests  and  is  never  shaken  ; 

It  is  the  star  to  every  v/andering  bark, 

Whose  worth's  unknown,  although  his  height  be  taken. 

Love's  not  Time's  fool,  though  rosy  lips  and  cheeks 

Within  his  bending  sickle's  compass  come  ; 

Love  alters  not  with  his  brief  hours  and  weeks, 

But  bears  it  out  even  to  the  edge  of  doom. 

If  this  be  error,  and  upon  me  proved, 

1  never  writ,  nor  no  man  ever  loved. 

xcix 

(117) 

A  CCUSE  me  thus  :  that  I  have  scanted  all 
Wherein  I  should  your  great  deserts  repay, 
Forgot  upon  your  dearest  love  to  call. 
Whereto  all  bonds  do  tie  me  day  by  day  ; 
That  I  have  frequent  been  with  unknown  minds 
And  given  to  time  your  own  dear-purchased  right ; 
That  I  have  hoisted  sail  to  all  the  winds 
Which  should  transport  me  farthest  from  your  sight. 
Book  both  my  wilfulness  and  errors  down, 
And  on  just  proof  surmise  accumulate  ; 
Bring  me  within  the  level  of  your  frown, 
But  shoot  not  at  me  in  your  wakened  hate  ; 
Since  my  appeal  says,  I  did  strive  to  prove 
The  constancy  and  virtue  of  your  love. 


English  Sonnets  51 


(128)  j 

HOW  oft,  when  thou,  my  music,  music  play'st,  Wiu.iam        | 

oHAKSPEARE  I 

Upon  that  blessed  wood  whose  motion  sounds         , — ^  ^        ! 

'■  1504 — IDIO  I 

With  thy  sweet  fingers,  when  thou  gently  sway'st 

The  wiry  concord  that  mine  ear  confounds,  ' 

Do  I  envy  those  jacks  that  nimble  leap  I 

To  kiss  the  tender  inward  of  thy  hand,  I 

Whilst  my  poor  lips,  which  should  that  harvest  reap,  I 

At  the  wood's  boldness  by  thee  blushing  stand  !  i 

To  be  so  tickled,  they  would  change  their  state  ; 

And  situation  with  those  dancing  chips,  i 

O'er  whom  thy  fingers  walk  with  gentle  gait,  1 

Making  dead  wood  more  blest  than  living  lips.  I 

Since  saucy  jacks  so  happy  are  in  this,  \ 
Give  them  thy  fingers,  me  thy  lips  to  kiss. 


CI 

(129) 

HE  expense  of  spirit  in  a  waste  of  shame 


T 


Is  lust  in  action  ;  and  till  action,  lust 
Is  perjured,  murderous,  bloody,  full  of  blame, 
Savage,  extreme,  rude,  cruel,  not  to  trust ; 
Enjoyed  no  sooner  but  despised  straight ; 
Past  reason  hunted  ;  and  no  sooner  had, 
Past  reason  hated,  as  a  swallowed  bait 
On  purpose  laid  to  make  the  taker  mad  : 
Mad  in  pursuit  and  in  possession  so  ; 
Had,  having,  and  in  quest  to  have,  extreme  ; 
A  bliss  in  proof,  and  proved,  a  very  woe  ; 
Before,  a  joy  proposed  ;  behind,  a  dream. 
All  this  the  world  well  knows  ;  yet  none  knows  well 
To  shun  the  heaven  that  leads  men  to  this  hell. 


1564 — i6i6 


•1 

52  A  Treasury  of 

cii  \ 

i 

(132)  i 

ShIks"eare     'X'HINE  eyes  I  love,  and  they,  as  pitying  me,  | 

—  Knowing  thy  heart  torments  me  with  disdain,  i 

Have  put  on  black,  and  loving  mourners  be,  .1 

Looking  with  pretty  ruth  upon  my  pain. 
And  truly  not  the  morning  sun  of  heaven  : 

Better  becomes  the  gray  cheeks  of  the  east,  \ 

Nor  that  full  star  that  ushers-in  the  even 
Doth  half  that  glory  to  the  sober  west,  ' 

As  those  two  mourning  eyes  become  thy  face  :  ■ 

O,  let  it  then  as  well  beseem  thy  heart 
To  mourn  for  me,  since  mourning  doth  thee  grace, 
And  suit  thy  pity  like  in  every  part. 
Then  will  I  swear  beauty  herself  is  black 
And  all  they  foul  that  thy  complexion  lack. 


cm 

(138) 

A'X  fHEN  my  Love  swears  that  she  is  made  of  truth 

I  do  believe  her,  though  I  know  she  lies, 
That  she  might  think  me  some  untutored  youth. 
Unlearned  in  the  world's  false  subtleties. 
Thus  vainly  thinking  that  she  thinks  me  young, 
Although  she  knows  my  days  are  past  the  best, 
Simply  I  credit  her  false-speaking  tongue  : 
On  both  sides  thus  is  simple  truth  suppressed. 
But  wherefore  says  she  not  she  is  unjust  ? 
And  wherefore  say  not  I  that  I  am  old  ? 
O,  love's  best  habit  is  in  seeming  trust. 
And  age  in  love  loves  not  to  have  years  told  : 
Therefore  I  lie  with  her,  and  she  with  me, 
And  in  our  faults  by  lies  we  flattered  be. 


English  Sonnets  53 

CIV 

(139)  ; 

OCALL  not  me  to  justify  the  wrons:  Wiluam        ' 

^  ShaKSI'EAKR 

That  thy  unkindness  lays  upon  my  heart  ;  —          '^ 

J                          .       ,  .                         .  1564 — 1616 
Wound  me  not  with  tnme  eye,  but  with  thy  tongue  ; 

Use  power  with  power,  and  slay  me  not  by  art. 

Tell  me  thou  lov'st  elsewhere  ;  but  in  my  sight,  ' 

Dear  heart,  forbear  to  glance  thine  eye  aside  : 

What  need'st  thou  wound  with  cunning,  when  thy  might 

Is  more  than  my  o'er-pressed  defence  can  bide  ? 

Let  me  excuse  thee  :  ah  !  my  Love  well  knows 

Her  pretty  looks  have  been  mine  enemies, 

And  therefore  from  my  face  she  turns  my  foes, 

That  they  elsewhere  might  dart  their  injuries  : 

Yet  do  not  so  ;  but  since  I  am  near  slain. 

Kill  me  outright  with  looks,  and  rid  my  pain. 


cv 

(  146  ) 

"pOOR  Soul,  the  centre  of  my  sinful  earth. 

Fooled  by  these  rebel  powers  that  thee  array, 
Why  dost  thou  pine  within  and  suffer  dearth, 
Painting  thy  outward  walls  so  costly  gay  ? 
W^hy  so  large  cost,  having  so  short  a  lease, 
Dost  thou  upon  thy  fading  mansion  spend  ? 
Shall  worms,  inheritors  of  this  excess. 
Eat  up  thy  charge  ?  is  this  thy  body's  end  ? 
Then,  Soul,  live  thou  upon  thy  servant's  loss, 
And  let  that,pine  to  aggravate  thy  store  ; 
Buy  terms  divine  in  selling  hours  of  dross  ; 
Within  be  fed,  without  be  rich  no  more  : 
So  shalt  thou  feed  on  Death,  that  feeds  on  men, 
And  Death  once  dead,  there's  no  more  dying  then  ! 


54  A  Treasury  of 


I 
i 
I 

CVI 


1564 — I6I6 


(148) 

William        /^  ME  !  what  cvcs  hath  Lovc  put  in  my  head, 

Shakspeare         \^    f  .  i.  J  1 

Which  have  no  correspondence  with  true  sight! 
Or,  if  they  have,  where  is  my  judgment  fled, 
That  censures  falsely  what  they  see  aright  ? 
If  that  be  fair  whereon  my  false  eyes  dote, 
What  means  the  world  to  say  it  is  not  so  ? 
If  it  be  not,  then  Love  doth  well  denote 
Love's  eye  is  not  so  true  as  all  men's  *  no.' 
How  can  it  ?     O,  how  can  Love's  eye  be  true, 
That  is  so  vexed  with  watching  and  with  tears  ? 
No  marvel  then,  though  I  mistake  my  view  ; 
The  sun  itself  sees  not  till  heaven  clears. 
O  cunning  Love  !  with  tears  thou  keep'st  me  blind, 
Lest  eyes  well-seeing  thy  foul  faults  should  find. 


CVII 


JohnDavies     T^HE  frosty  beard,  inclining  all  to  white, 

OF  Hereford  I  1111  1  •         1 

The  snowy  head,or  head  more  white  than  snow. 


1560-5 — 1618 


The  crow-foot  near  the  eyes,  brows  furrowed  quite,  1 

With  trenches  in  the  cheeks.  Experience  show.  i 

These  are  the  emblems  of  Authority,  \ 

Which  joined  to  those  do  much  augment  her  might :  i 

These  are  the  signs  of  Reason's  sovereignty,  . 

And  hieroglyphics,  spelling  Judgment  right.  '  | 

These  are  the  trophies  reared  by  Time's  left  hand 
Upon  the  spoil  of  Passion  and  her  powers : 
We,  by  these  symbols.  Wisdom  understand, 

That  us  directeth,  and  protecteth  ours  :  '  j 

All  these  in  me  begin  to  come  in  sight,  ; 
Yet  can  I  hardly  rule  myself  aright. 


A 


English  Sonnets  55 

CVIII 

H,  sweet  Content,  where  is  thy  mild  abode  ?  Barnabe 

■'  Barnes 


Is  it  with  shepherds  and  hght-hearted  swains 
Which  sing  upon  the  downs  and  pipe  abroad, 
Tending  their  flocks  and  cattle  on  the  plains  ? 
Ah,  sweet  Content,  where  dost  thou  safely  rest  ? 
In  heaven,  with  angels  which  the  praises  sing 
Of  him  that  made,  and  rules  at  his  behest, 
The  minds  and  hearts  of  every  living  thing  ? 
Ah,  sweet  Content,  where  doth  thine  harbour  hold  ? 
Is  it  in  churches  with  religious  men 
Which  please  the  gods  with  prayers  manifold. 
And  in  their  studies  meditate  it  then  ? — 
Whether  thou  dost  in  heaven,  or  earth  appear, 
Be  where  thou  wilt,  thou  will  not  harbour  here. 


1568-9 — 1609 


cix  • 

T  TNTO  my  spirit  lend  an  angel's  wing, 

By  which  it  might  mount  to  that  place  of  rest 
Where  Paradise  may  me  relieve  opprest ; 
Lend  to  my  tongue  an  angel's  voice  to  sing 
Thy  praise  my  comfort,  and  for  ever  bring 
My  notes  thereof  from  the  bright  east  to  west. 
Thy  mercy  lend  unto  my  soul  distrest, 
Thy  grace  unto  my  wits  ;  then  shall  the  sling 
Of  righteousness  that  monster  Satan  kill, 
Who  with  despair  my  dear  salvation  dared, 
And  like  the  Philistine  stood  breathing  still 
Proud  threats  against  my  soul  for  heaven  prepared  : 
At  length  I  like  an  angel  shall  appear, 
In  spotless  white  an  angel's  crown  to  wear. 


56  A  Treasury  of 

ex 

John  Donne       A  g  due  by  many  titles,  I  resign 
1573— 1631       "^  ■*■     Myself  to  Thee,  O  God.     First  I  was  made 
By  Thee  and  for  Thee  ;  and,  when  I  was  decayed, 
Thy  blood  bought  that  the  which  before  was  thine  ; 
I  am  thy  son,  made  with  thyself  to  shine. 
Thy  servant  whose  pains  Thou  hast  still  repaid, 
Thy  sheep,  thine  image,  and,  till  I  betrayed 
Myself,  a  temple  of  thy  Spirit  divine. 
Why  doth  the  devil,  then,  usurp  on  me  ? 
Why  doth  he  steal,  nay,  ravish  that's  thy  right  ? 
Except  Thou  rise,  and  for  thine  own  work  fight, 
Oh  !  I  shall  soon  despair,  when  I  do  see 
That  Thou  lov'st  mankind  well,yet  wilt  not  choose  me, 
And  Satan  hates  me,  yet  is  loth  to  lose  me. 


CXI 

"pvEATH,  be  not  proud,  though  some  have  called 

^     thee 

Mighty  and  dreadful,  for  thou  art  not  so  ; 

Eor  those  whom  thou  think'st  thou  dost  overthrow 

Die  not,  poor  Death  ;  nor  yet  canst  thou  kill  me. 

From  rest  and  sleep,  which  but  thy  pictures  be, 

Much  pleasure  :  then  from  thee  much  more  must  flow, 

And  soonest  our  best  men  with  thee  do  go — 

Rest  of  their  bones  and  souls'  delivery  ! 

Thou'rt  slave  to  fate,  chance,  kings,  and  desperate 

men, 
And  dost  with  poison,  war,  and  sickness  dwell ; 
And  poppy  or  chariri*  can  make  us  sleep  as  well, 
And  better  than  thy  stroke.    Why  swell'st  thou  then  ? 
One  short  sleep  past,  we  wake  eternally. 
And  death  shall  be  no  more  :  Death,  thou  shalt  die. 


I 


English  Sonnets  57 

CXII 

KNOW  that  all  beneath  the  moon  decays,  William 

And  what  by  mortals  in  this  world  is  brought,  ^^ 


In  Time's  great  periods  shall  return  to  nought ; 
That  fairest  states  have  fatal  nights  and  days  ; 
I  know  how  all  the  Muse's  heavenly  lays, 
With  toil  of  spright  which  are  so  dearly  bought. 
As  idle  sounds  of  few  or  none  are  sought, 
And  that  nought  lighter  is  than  airy  praise. 
I  know  frail  beauty  like  the  purple  flower. 
To  which  one  morn  oft  birth  and  death  affords  ; 
That  love  a  jarring  is  of  minds'  accords. 
Where  sense  and  will  invassal  reason's  power  : 
Know  what  I  list,  this  all  can  not  me  move. 
But  that,  O  me  !  I  both  must  write  and  love. 


CXIII 

TVrOW  while  the  Night  her  sable  veil  hath  spread, 

And  silently  her  resty  coach  doth  roll, 
Rousing  with  her  from  Tethys'  azure  bed 
Those  starry  nymphs  which  dance  about  the  pole  ; 
While  Cynthia,  in  purest  cypress  cled. 
The  Latmian  shepherd  in  a  trance  descries. 
And  whiles  looks  pale  from  height  of  all  the  skies, 
Whiles  dyes  her  beauties  in  a  bashful  red  ; 
While  Sleep  in  triumph  closed  hath  all  eyes, 
And  birds  and  beasts  a  silence  sweet  do  keep. 
And  Proteus'  monstrous  people  in  the  deep 
The  winds  and  waves  hushed  up  to  rest  entice  ; 
I  wake,  muse,  weep,  and  who  my  heart  hath  slain 
See  still  before  me  to  augment  my  pain. 


William 
Drummond 

1585—1649 


58  A  Treasury  of 

cxiv 

Q  LEEP,  Silence'  child,  sweet  father  of  soft  rest, 

^-^  Prince  whose  approach  peace  to  all  mortals  brings, 

Indifferent  host  to  shepherds  and  to  kings, 

Sole  comforter  of  minds  with  grief  opprest ; 

Lo,  by  thy  charming-rod  all  breathing  things 

Lie  slumbering,  with  forgetfulness  possest. 

And  yet  o'er  me  to  spread  thy  drowsy  wings 

Thou  spares,  alas  !  who  cannot  be  thy  guest. 

Since  I  am  thine,  O  come,  but  with  that  face 

To  inward  light  which  thou  art  wont  to  show  ; 

With  feigned  solace  ease  a  true-felt  woe  ; 

Or  if,  deaf  god,  thou  do  deny  that  grace, 

Come  as  thou  wilt,  and  what  thou  wilt  bequeath, — 

I  long  to  kiss  the  image  of  my  death. 


cxv 

A  H  !  burning  thoughts,  now  let  me  take  some  rest. 
And  your  tumultuous  broils  awhile  appease  ; 
Is't  not  enough,  stars,  fortune,  love  molest 
Me  all  at  once,  but  ye  must  to  displease  ? 
Let  hope,  though  false,  yet  lodge  within  my  breast ; 
My  high  attempt,  though  dangerous,  yet  praise. 
What  though  I  trace  not  right  heaven's  steepy  ways  ? 
It  doth  suffice  my  fall  shall  make  me  blest. 
I  do  not  doat  on  days,  nor  fear  not  death  : 
So  that  my  life  be  brave,  what  though  not  long  ? 
Let  me  renowned  live  from  the  vulgar  throng. 
And  when  ye  list.  Heavens  I  take  this  borrowed  breath. 
Men  but  like  visions  are,  Time  all  doth  claim  : 
He  lives  who  dies  to  win  a  lasting  name. 


I 


English  Sonnets  59 

cxvi 

N  vain  I  haunt  the  cold  and  silver  springs,  wilham 

To  quench  the  fever  burning  in  my  veins  ;  s^ITfi 


In  vain,  love's  pilgrim,  mountains,  dales,  and  plains, 

I  overrun  ;  vain  help  long  absence  brings  : 

In  vain,  my  friends,  your  counsel  me  constrains 

To  fly,  and  place  my  thoughts  on  other  things. 

Ah  !  like  the  bird  that  fired  hath  her  wings. 

The  more  I  move,  the  greater  are  my  pains. 

Desire,  alas  !  Desire,  a  Zeuxis  new, 

From  Indies  borrowing  gold,  from  western  skies 

Most  bright  cinoper,  sets  before  mine  eyes 

In  every  place,  her  hair,  sweet  look,  and  hue  ; 

That  fly,  run,  rest  I,  all  doth  prove  but  vain  : 

My  life  lies  in  those  looks  which  have  me  slain. 


CXVII 

'THRUST  not,  sweet  soul,  those  curled  waves  of  gold 
With  gentle  tides  which  on  your  temples  flow, 
Nor  temples  spread  with  flakes  of  virgin  snow, 
Nor  snow  of  cheeks  with  Tyrian  grain  enrolled  ; 
Trust  not  those  shining  lights  which  wrought  my  woe. 
When  first  I  did  their  burning  rays  behold. 
Nor  voice,  whose  sounds  more  strange  effects  do  show 
Than  of  the  Thracian  harper  have  been  told. 
Look  to  this  dying  lily,  fading  rose, 
Dark  hyacinth,  of  late  whose  blushing  beams 
Made  all  the  neighbouring  herbs  and  grass  rejoice, 
And  think  how  little  is  'twixt  life's  extremes  : 
The  cruel  tyrant  that  did  kill  those  flovrers 
Shall  once,  ay  me  !  not  spare  that  spring  of  yours. 


I5S5— 1649 


6o  A   Treasury  of 

CXVIII 

William         Tp  crost  with  all  misliaps  be  my  poor  life, 

Drummond  I 

If  one  short  day  I  never  spent  in  mirth, 
If  my  spright  with  itself  holds  lasting  strife, 
If  sorrow's  death  is  but  new  sorrow's  birth  ; 
If  this  vain  world  be  but  a  sable  stage 
Where  slave-born  man  plays  to  the  scofifing  stars  ; 
If  youth  be  tossed  with  love,  with  weakness  age. 
If  knowledge  serve  to  hold  our  thoughts  in  wars  ; 
If  time  can  close  the  hundred  mouths  of  fame, 
And  make  what  long  since  passed  like  that  to  be  ; 
If  virtue  only  be  an  idle  name  ; 
If  I  when  I  was  born  was  born  to  die  ; 
Why  seek  I  to  prolong  these  loathsome  days  ? 
The  fairest  rose  in  shortest  time  decays. 


cxix 

"P\EAR  wood,  and  you,  sweet  solitary  place. 
Where  from  the  vulgar  I  estranged  live, 
Contented  more  with  what  your  shades  me  give 
Than  if  I  had  what  Thetis  doth  embrace  ; 
What  snaky  eye,  grown  jealous  of  my  pace. 
Now  from  your  silent  horrors  would  me  drive. 
When  Sun,  progressing  in  his  glorious  race 
Beyond  the  Twins,  doth  near  our  pole  arrive  ? 
What  sweet  delight  a  quiet  life  affords, 
And  what  it  is  to  be  of  bondage  free, 
Far  from  the  madding  worldling's  hoarse  discords, 
Sweet  flowery  place  I  first  did  learn  of  thee  : 
Ah  !  if  I  were  mine  own,  your  dear  resorts 
I  would  not  change  with  princes'  stately  courts. 


Ejiglish  Sonnets  6i 

cxx 

ALEXIS,  here  she  stayed  ;  among  these  pines,  William 

'  .  -^         '  °  i  '  Drummond 

Sweet  hermitress,  she  did  alone  repair  ; 


Here  did  she  spread  the  treasure  of  her  hair, 
More  rich  than  that  brought  from  the  Colchian  mines; 
She  set  her  by  these  musked  eglantines — 
The  happy  place  the  print  seems  yet  to  bear  ; 
Her  voice  did  sweeten  here  thy  sugared  lines, 
To  which  winds,  trees,  beasts,  birds,  did  lend  their  ear; 
Me  here  she  first  perceived,  and  here  a  morn 
Of  bright  carnations  did  o'erspread  her  face  ; 
Here  did  she  sigh,  here  first  my  hopes  were  born, 
And  I  first  got  a  pledge  of  promised  grace  ; 
But  ah  !  what  served  it  to  be  happy  so 
Sith  passed  pleasures  double  but  new  woe  ? 


1585— 1649 


CXXI 

CWEET  soul,  which  in  the  April  of  thy  years 

^       So  to  enrich  the  heaven  mad'st  poor  this  round 

And  now  with  golden  rays  of  glory  crowned 

Most  blest  abid'st  above  the  sphere  of  spheres  ; 

If  heavenly  laws,  alas  !  have  not  thee  bound 

From  looking  to  this  globe  that  all  upbears. 

If  ruth  and  pity  there  above  be  found, 

O  deign  to  lend  a  look  unto  those  tears. 

Do  not  disdain,  dear  ghost,  this  sacrifice ; 

And  though  I  raise  not  pillars  to  thy  praise, 

Mine  offerings  take  ;  let  this  for  me  sufiice  : 

My  heart  a  living  pyramid  I  raise  ; 

And  whilst  kings'  tombs  with  laurels  flourish  green, 

Thine  shall  with  myrtles  and  these  flowers  be  seen. 


I5S5— 1649 


62  A  T?'easi/ry  of 

CXXII 

William         TV  /T  Y  lutc,  be  as  tliou  wast  whcn  thou  didst  grow 

Drummond  VI.  . 

—  With  thy  green  mother  in  some  shady  grove, 

When  immelodious  winds  but  made  thee  move, 
And  birds  on  thee  their  ramage  did  bestow. 
Sith  that  dear  voice  which  did  thy  sounds  approve. 
Which  used  in  such  harmonious  strains  to  flow, 
Is  reft  from  earth  to  tune  those  spheres  above, 
What  art  thou  but  a  harbinger  of  woe  ? 
Thy  pleasing  notes  be  pleasing  notes  no  more. 
But  orphan  waitings  to  the  fainting  ear  ; 
Each  stop  a  sigh,  each' sound  draws  forth  a  tear ; 
Be  therefore  silent  as  in  woods  before  : 
Or  if  that  any  hand  to  touch  thee  deign, 
Like  widowed  turtle  still  her  loss  complain. 


CXXIII 

OWEET  Spring, thou  turn'st  with  all  thy  goodly  train, 
Thy  head  with  flames,  thy  mantle  bright  with 
flowers  ; 
The  zephyrs  curl  the  green  locks  of  the  plain. 
The  clouds  for  joy  in  pearls  weep  down  their  showers: 
Thou  turn'st,  sweet  youth;  but  ah!  my  pleasant  hours 
And  happy  days  with  thee  come  not  again  : 
The  sad  memorials  only  of  my  pain 
Do  with  thee  turn,  which  turn  my  sweets  in  sours. 
Thou  art  the  same  which  still  thou  wast  before, 
Delicious,  wanton,  amiable,  fair  ; 
But  she,  whose  breath  embalmed  thy  wholesome  air, 
Is  gone  ;  nor  gold,  nor  gems  her  can  restore. 
Neglected  Virtue  !  seasons  go  and  come. 
While  thine,  forgot,  lie  closed  in  a  tomb. 


English  Sonnets  63 


ex  XIV 
HUMAN  FRAILTY. 


A  GOOD  that  never  satisfies  the  mind,  Wh.liam 

A  beauty  fading  hke  the  April  flowers, 


1585— 1649 


A  sweet  with  floods  of  gall  that  runs  combined, 

A  pleasure  passing  ere  in  thought  made  ours, 

A  honour  that  more  fickle  is  than  wind, 

A  glory  at  opinion's  frown  that  lowers, 

A  treasury  which  bankrupt  time  devours, 

A  knowledge  than  grave  ignorance  more  blind, 

A  vain  delight  our  equals  to  command, 

A  style  of  greatness,  in  effect  a  dream, 

A  fabulous  thought  of  holding  sea  and  land, 

A  servile  lot,  decked  with  a  pompous  name  : 

Are  the  strange  ends  we  toil  for  here  below, 

Till  wisest  death  make  us  our  errors  know. 


cxxv 

NO  TRUST  IN  TIME. 

I 

T    OOK  how  the  flower  which  lingeringly  doth  fade,  ■ 

■^     The  morning's  darling  late,the  summer's  queen, 

Spoiled  of  that  juice  which  kept  it  fresh  and  green, 

As  high  as  it  did  raise,  bows  low  the  head  : 

Right  so  my  life,  contentments  being  dead,       .  ] 

Or  in  their  contraries  but  only  seen,  \ 

With  swifter  speed  declines  than  erst  it  spread,  ; 

And  blasted,  scarce  now  shows  what  it  hath  been. 

As  doth  the  pilgrim  therefore,  whom  the  night 

By  darkness  would  imprison  on  his  way, 

Think  on  thy  home,  my  soul,  and  think  aright 

Of  what  yet  rests  thee  of  life's  wasting  day  ; 

Thy  sun  posts  westward,  passed  is  thy  morn, 

And  twice  it  is  not  given  thee  to  be  born. 


64  A  Treasury  of 

CXXVI  i 

1 

THE  BOOK  OF   THE    WORLD.  1 

I 

■  I 

William        /^F  this  fair  volume  which  we  World  do  name 

—           ^^     If  we  the  sheets  and  leaves  could  turn  with  ; 
1585- 1649 

care,  i 

Of  him  who  it  corrects  and  did  it  frame,  1 

We  clear  might  read  the  art  and  wisdom  rare  :  i 
Find  out  his  power  which  wildest  powers  doth  tame, 
His  providence  extending  everywhere, 

His  justice  which  proud  rebels  doth  not  spare,  ,  ■ 
In  every  page,  no,  period  of  the  same. 
But  silly  we,  like  foolish  children,  rest 

W^ell  pleased  with  coloured  vellum,  leaves  of  gold,  ; 

Fair  dangling  ribands,  leaving  what  is  best,  ■ 

On  the  great  writer's  sense  ne'er  taking  hold  ;  i 

Or  if  by  chance  our  minds  do  muse  on  ought,  ] 


It  is  some  picture  on  the  margin  wrought. 


cxxvii 
FOR    THE   BAPTIST. 

nPHE  last  and  greatest  herald  of  Heaven's  King, 
Girt  with  rough  skins,  hies  to  the  deserts  wild, 
Among  that  savage  brood  the  woods  forth  bring. 
Which  he  than  man  more  harmless  found  and  mild. 
His  food  was  blossoms,  and  what  young  doth  spring, 
W^ith  honey  that  from  virgin  hives  distilled  ; 
Parched  body,  hollow  eyes,  some  uncouth  thing 
Made  him  appear,  long  since  from  earth  exiled. 
There  bursts  he  forth  :  All  ye  whose  hopes  rely 
On  God,  with  me  amidst  these  deserts  mourn, 
Repent,  repent,  and  from  old  errors  turn  ! — 
Who  listened  to  his  voice,  obeyed  his  cry  ? 
Only  the  echoes,  which  he  made  relent, 
Rung  from  their  marble  caves.  Repent !  Repent ! 


English  So)mcts  65 


CXXVIII 
THE  PRAISE  OF  A  SOLITAR  V  LIFE. 

THRICE  happy  he,  who  by  some  shady  grove,  Wiu.iam 

Far  from  the  clamorous  world  doth  live  his  own ;  — 

1585 — 1649 

Though  solitary,  who  is  not  alone. 
But  doth  converse  with  that  Eternal  Love. 
O  how  more  sweet  is  birds'  harmonious  moan, 
Or  the  hoarse  sobbings  of  the  widowed  dove, 
Than  those  smooth  whisperings  near  a  prince's  throne, 
Which  good  make  doubtful,  do  the  evil  approve  ! 
O  how  more  sweet  is  Zephyr's  wholesome  breath, 
And  sighs  embalmed  which  new-born  flowers  unfold, 
Than  that  applause  vain  honour  doth  bequeath  ! 
How  sweet  are  streams  to  poison  drunk  in  gold  ! 
The  world  is  full  of  horrors,  troubles,  slights  ; 
Woods'  harmless  shades  have  only  true-deHghts. 


CXXIX 

TO  A  NIGHTINGALE. 

OWEET  bird,  that  sing'st  away  the  early  hours, 

Of  winters  past  or  coming  void  of  care. 
Well  pleased  with  delights  which  present  are. 
Fair  seasons,  budding  sprays,  sweet-smelling  flowers  ; 
To  rocks,  to  springs,  to  .rills,  from  leafy  bowers 
Thou  thy  Creator's  goodness  dost  declare, 
And  what  dear  gifts  on  thee  he  did  not  spare, 
A  stain  to  human  sense  in  sin  that  lowers. 
What  soul  can  be  so  sick  which  by  thy  songs, 
Attired  in  sweetness,  sweetly  is  not  driven 
Quite  to  forget  earth's  turmoils,  spites,  and  wrongs. 
And  lift  a  reverend  eye  and  thought  to  heaven  ! 
Sweet  artless  songster,  thou  my  mind  dost  raise 
To  airs  of  spheres,  yes,  and  to  angels'  lays. 

F 


66  A  Treasury  of 


ex  XX 
CONTENT  AND  RESOLUTE. 


Drummond        a  S  when  it  happeneth  that  some  lovely  town 
158^649  Unto  a  barbarous  besieger  falls, 

Who  there  by  sword  and  flame  himself  instals, 
And,  cruel,  it  in  tears  and  blood  doth  drown  ; 
Her  beauty  spoiled,  her  citizens  made  thralls, 
His  spite  yet  so  cannot  her  all  throw  down 
But  that  some  statue,  arch,  fane  of  renown 
Yet  lurks  unmaimed  within  her  weeping  walls  : 
So,  after  all  the  spoil,  disgrace,  and  wrack, 
That  time,  the  world,  and  death,  could  bring  com- 
bined, 
Amidst  that  mass  of  ruins  they  did  make, 
Safe  and  all  scarless  yet  remains  my  mind. 
From  this  so  high  transcending  rapture  springs, 
That  I,  all  else  defaced,  not  envy  kings. 


cxxxi. 

T^OTH  then  the  world  go  thus,  doth  all  thus  move  ? 

Is  this  the  justice  which  on  earth  we  find  ? 
Is  this  that  firm  decree  which  all  doth  bind  ? 
Are  these  your  influences.  Powers  above  ? 
Those  souls  which  vice's  moody  mists  most  blind, 
Blind  Fortune,  blindly,  most  their  friend  doth  prove  ; 
And  they  who  thee,  poor  idol  Virtue  !  love. 
Ply  like  a  feather  tossed  by  storm  and  wind. 
Ah  !  if  a  Providence  doth  sway  this  All, 
Why  should  best  minds  groan  under  most  distress  ? 
Or  why  should  pride  humility  make  thrall. 
And  injuries  the  innocent  oppress  ? 
Heavens  !  hinder,  stop  this  fate  ;  or  grant  a  time 
When  good  may  have,  as  well  as  bad,  their  prime. 


English  Somiets  67 

CXXXII 
BEFORE  A    POEM  OF  IRENE. 

lyT  OURN  not,  fair  Greece,  the  ruin  of  thy  kings,       ^^'^^'^^ 
Thy  temples  razed,  thy  forts  with  flames  de-       ^  g~g 
voured. 
Thy  champions  slain,  thy  virgins  pure  deflowered, 
Nor  all  those  griefs  which  stern  Bellona  brings  : 
But  mourn,  fair  Greece,  mourn  that  that  sacred  band 
Which  made  thee  once  so  famous  by  their  songs, 
Forced  by  outrageous  fate,  have  left  thy  land. 
And  left  thee  scarce  a  voice  to  plain  thy  wrongs  ! 
Mourn  that  those  climates  which  to  thee  appear 
Beyond  both  Phoebus  and  his  sister's  ways. 
To  save  thy  deeds  from  death  must  lend  thee  lays, 
And  such  as  from  Mus^us  thou  didst  hear  : 
For  now  Irene  hath  attained  such  fame. 
That  Hero's  ghost  doth  weep  to  hear  her  name. 


CXXXIII 


F 


AIREST,  when  by  the  rules  of  palmistry,  William 

1  11  -r  11  Browne 

You  took  my  hand  to  try  if  you  could  guess, 


By  lines  therein,  if  any  wight  there  be 
Ordained  to  make  me  know  some  happiness, 
I  wished  that  those  characters  could  explain 
Whom  I  will  never  wrong  with  hope  to  win  ; 
Or  that  by  them  a  copy  might  be  seen 
By  you,  O  Love,  what  thoughts  I  have  within. 
But  since  the  hand  of  Nature  did  not  set 
(As  providently  loth  to  have  it  known) 
The  means  to  find  that  hidden  alphabet, 
Mine  eyes  shall  be  th'  interpreters  alone. 
By  them  conceive  my  thoughts  and  tell  me,  fair. 
If  now  you  see  her  that,  doth  love  me  there  ! 


-1643  ? 


68  A  Treasury  of 


William 
Browne 


I 

cxxxiv  i 


A    ROSE,  as  fair  as  ever  saw  the  North, 
gg^g    ,  Grew  in  a  little  garden  all  alone  : 

A  sweeter  flower  did  Nature  ne'er  put  forth, 

Nor  fairer  garden  yet  was  never  known. 

The  maidens  danced  about  it  morn  and  noon. 

And  learned  bards  of  it  their  ditties  made  ; 

The  nimble  fairies,  by  the  pale-faced  moon. 

Watered  the  root,  and  kissed  her  pretty  shade. 

But,  welladay  !  the  gardener  careless  grew, 

The  maids  and  fairies  both  were  kept  away, 

And  in  a  drought  the  caterpillars  threw 

Themselves  upon  the  bud  and  every  spray. 

God  shield  the  stock  !     If  heav^i  send  no  supplies, 

The  fairest  blossom  of  the  garden  dies. 


cxxxv 

T^OWN  in  a  valley,  by  a  forest's  side. 

Near  where  the  crystal  Thames  rolls  on  her  waves, 
I  saw  a  mushroom  stand  in  haughty  pride, 
As  if  the  lilies  grew  to  be  his  slaves. 
The  gentle  daisy,  with  her  silver  crown. 
Worn  in  the  breast  of  many  a  shepherd's  lass. 
The  humble  violet,  that  lowly  down 
Salutes  the  gay  nymphs  as  they  trimly  pass, — 
These,  with  a  many  more,  methought  complained 
That  Nature  should  those  needless  things  produce. 
Which  not  alone  the  sun  from  others  gained. 
But  turn  it  wholly  to  their  proper  use. 
I  could  not  choose  but  grieve  that  Nature  made 
So  glorious  flowers  to  live  in  such  a  shade. 


English  Sowiets  69 

cxxxvi 

SIN. 

LORD,  with  what  care  hast  Thou  begirt  us  round!        George 
Parents  first  season  us  ;  then  schoohiiasters  — 

Deliver  us  to  laws  ;  they  send  us  bound  '^^■^~'  ^^ 

To  rules  of  reason,  holy  messengers, 
Pulpits  and  Sundays,  sorrow  dogging  sin, 
Afflictions  sorted,  anguish  of  all  sizes. 
Fine  nets  and  stratagems  to  catch  us  in. 
Bibles  laid  open,  millions  of  surprises  ; 
Blessings  beforehand,  ties  of  gratefulness, 
The  sound  of  glory  ringing  in  our  ears  ; 
Without,  our  shame  ;  within,  our  consciences  ; 
Angels  and  grace,  eternal  hopes  and  fears. 
Yet  all  these  fences  and  their  whole  array 
One  cunning  bosom-sin  blows  quite  away. 


CXXXVII 
LO VE'S  ANNIVERSAR  V. 

TO   THE  SUN. 

'X'HOU  art  returned,  great  light,  to  that  blest  hour        William 
In  which  I  first  by  marriage,  sacred  power,  abington 

Joined  with  Castara  hearts  :  and  as  the  same  1605— 1645 

Thy  lustre  is,  as  then,  so  is  our  flame  ; 
Which  had  increased,  but  that  by  love's  decree 
'Twas  such  at  first  it  ne'er  could  greater  be. 
But  tell  me,  glorious  lamp,  in  thy  survey 
Of  things  below  thee,  what  did  not  decay 
By  age  to  weakness  ?     I  since  that  have  seen 
The  rose  bud  forth  and  fade,  the  tree  grow  green 
And  wither,  and  the  beauty  of  the  field 
With  winter  wrinkled.     Even  thyself  dost  yield 
Something  to  time,  and  to  thy  grave  fall  nigher ; — 
But  virtuous  love  is  one  sweet  endless  fire. 


70  A  Treasury  of 

CXXXVIII 

joHN_MiLTON     ^  NIGHTINGALE,  that  on  yon  bloomy  spray 
1608— 1674       v_y     Warbles  at  eve,  when  all  the  woods  are  still, 
Thou  with  fresh  hope  the  lover's  heart  dost  fill 
While  the  jolly  Hours  lead  on  propitious  May. 
Thy  liquid  notes  that  close  the  eye  of  day, 
First  heard  before  the  shallow  cuckoo's  bill. 
Portend  success  in  love.     O,  if  Jove's  will 
Have  linked  that  amorous  power  to  thy  soft  lay, 
Now  timely  sing,  ere  the  rude  bird  of  hate 
Foretell  my  hopeless  doom  in  some  grove  nigh  ; 
As  thou  from  year  to  year  hast  sung  too  late 
For  my  relief,  yet  hadst  no  reason  why  : 
Whether  the  Muse  or  Love  call  thee  his  mate, 
Both  them  I  serve,  and  of  their  train  am  I. 


cxxxix. 

T  TOW  soon  hath  Time,  the  subtle  thief  of  youth. 

Stolen  on  his  wing  my  three-and-twentieth  year! 
My  hasting  days  fly  on  with  full  career. 
But  my  late  spring  no  bud  or  blossom  shew'th. 
Perhaps  my  semblance  might  deceive  the  truth 
That  I  to  manhood  am  arrived  so  near  ; 
And  inward  ripeness  doth  much  less  appear. 
That  some  more  timely-happy  spirits  indu'th. 
Yet  be  it  less  or  more,  or  soon  or  slow. 
It  shall  be  still  in  strictest  measure  even. 
To  that  same  lot,  however  mean  or  high, 
Toward  which  Time  leads  me,  and  the  will  of  Heaven. 
All  is,  if  I  have  grace  to  use  it  so, 
As  ever  in  my  great  task-Master's  eye. 


English  Somiets  71 

CXL 
WHEN  THE  ASSAULT  WAS    INTENDED     ■ 

TO    THE    CITY. 

/^APTAIN,  or  Colonel,  or  Knight  in  arms,  John  m.ltom 

Whose  chance  on  these  defenceless  doors  may       1608—1674 
seize, 
If  deed  of  honour  did  thee  ever  please. 
Guard  them,  and  him  within  protect  from  harms. 
He  can  requite  thee,  for  he  knows  the  charms 
That  call  fame  on  such  gentle  acts  as  these  ; 
And  he  can  spread  thy  name  o'er  lands  and  seas, 
Whatever  clime  the  sun's  bright  circle  warms. 
Lift  not  thy  spear  against  the  Muses'  bower  : 
The  great  Emathian  conqueror  bid  spare 
The  house  of  Pindarus,  wheii  temple  and  tower 
Went  to  the  ground  ;  and  the  repeated  air 
Of  sad  Electra's  poet  had  the  power 
To  save  the  Athenian  walls  from  ruin  bare. 


CXLI 

T    ADY,  that  in  the  prime  of  earliest  youth 

Wisely  hast  shunned  the  broad  way  and  the  green, 
And  with  those  few  art  eminently  seen 
That  labour  up  the  hill  of  heavenly  truth. 
The  better  part  with  Mary  and  with  Ruth 
Chosen  thou  hast  ;  and  they  that  overween, 
And  at  thy  growing  virtues  fret  their  spleen. 
No  anger  find  in  thee,  but  pity  and  ruth. 
Thy  care  is  fixed,  and  zealously  attends 
To  fill  thy  odorous  lamp  with  deeds  of  light, 
And  hope  that  reaps  not  shame.     Therefore  be  sure 
Thou,  when  the  Bridegroom  with  his  feastful  friends 
Passes  to  bliss  at  the  mid-hour  of  nisrht. 
Hast  gained  thy  entrance.  Virgin  wise  and  pure. 


72  .  A  Treasury  of 

ex  LI  I 
TO  THE  LADY  MARGARET  LEY. 

John  Mii.tox     "pvAUGHTER  to  that  good  Earl,  once  President 
1608— 1674       ^-^     Of  England's  Council  and  her  Treasury, 
Who  lived  in  both,  unstained  with  gold  or  fee, 
And  left  them  both,  more  in  himself  content, 
Till  the  sad  breaking  of  that  Parliament 
Broke  him,  as  that  dishonest  victory 
At  Chaeronea,  fatal  to  liberty. 
Killed  with  report  that  old  man  eloquent, — 
Though  later  born  than  to  have  known  the  days 
Wherein  your  father  flourished,  yet  by  you, 
Madam,  methinks  I  see  him  living  yet ; 
So  well  your  words  his  noble  virtues  praise. 
That  all  both  judge  you  to  relate  them  true. 
And  to  possess  them,  honoured  Margaret. 


CXLIII 
TO  MR.  H.  LA  WES,  ON  HIS  AIRS. 

TTARRY,  whose  tuneful  and  well-measured  song 

First  taught  our  English  music  how  to  span 
Words  with  just  note  and  accent,  not  to  scan 
With  Midas  ears,  committing  short  and  long, 
Thy  worth  and  skill  exempts  thee  from  the  throng, 
With  praise  enough  for  Envy  to  look  wan  ; 
To  after-age  thou  shalt  be  writ  the  man 
That  with  smooth  air  couldst  humour  best  our  tongue. 
Thou  honour'st  Verse,  and  Verse  must  lend  her  wing 
To  honour  thee,  the  priest  of  Phoebus'  quire. 
That  tun'st  their  happiest  lines  in  hymn  or  story. 
Dante  shall  give  Fame  leave  to  set  thee  higher 
Than  his  Casella,  whom  he  wooed  to  sing. 
Met  in  the  milder  shades  of  Purgatory. 


English  Sonnets  73 

CXLIV 
ON   THE  RELIGIOUS  MEMORY  OF 

MRS.    CATHERINE  THOMSON, 
MY   CHRISTIAN    FRIEND,    DECEASED    l6   DECEMBER,    \t,i,'^. 

■\  "X  rHEN  Faith  and  Love,  which  parted  from  thee    John  Milton 
never,  1608— 1674 

Had  ripened  thy  just  soul  to  dwell  with  God, 
Meekly  thou  didst  resign  this  earthly  load 
Of  death,  called  life,  which  us  from_^life  doth  sever. 
Thy  works  and  alms  and  all  thy  good  endeavour 
Stayed  not  behind,  nor  in  the  grave  were  trod  ; 
But,  as  Faith  pointed  with  her  golden  rod,  i 

Followed  thee  up  to  joy  and  bliss  for  ever.  j 

Love  led  them  on,  and  Faith,  who  knew  them  best,  ' 

Thy  handmaids,  clad  them  o'er  with  purple  beams 
And  azure  wings,  that  up  they  flew  so  drest,  j 

And  spake  the  truth  of  thee  on  glorious  themes 
Before  the  Judge  ;  who  thenceforth  bid  thee  rest, 
And  drink  thy  fill  of  pure  immortal  streams.  \ 

I 

CXLV  s 

ON   THE  LORD   GENERAL  FAIRFAX,  j 

AT  THE  SIEGE  OF   COLCHESTER.  '  \ 

I 

T^AIRFAX,  whose  name  in  arms  through  Europe  rings. 

Filling  each  mouth  with  envy  or  with  praise,  \ 

And  all  her'jealous  monarchs  with  amaze,  j 

And  rumours  loud  that  daunt  remotest  kings, 
Thy  firm  unshaken  virtue  ever  brings 
Victory  home,  though  new  rebellions  raise 
Their  Hydra-heads,  and  the  false  North  displays 
Her  broken  league  to  imp  their  serpent  wings.  ' 

O  yet  a  nobler  task  awaits  thy  hand  ! 

For  what  can  war  but  endless  war  still  breed,  : 

Till  truth  and  right  from  violence  be  freed,  \ 

And  public  faith  cleared  from  the  shameful  brand 
Of  public  fraud  ?     In  vain  doth  A^alour  bleed  -         j 

While  Avarice  and  Rapine  share  the  land.  j 


74  A  Treasury  of 

CXLVI 
TO  THE  LORD  GENERAL  CROMWELL,  MA  V,  1652  ; 

ON   THE   PROPOSALS   OF   CERTAIN    MINISTERS    AT  THE  COMMITTEE 
FOR   PROPAGATION   OF  THE   GOSPEL. 

John  Milton     ^  ROMWELL,our  chief  of  men,who  through  a  cloud 
1608—1674        ^^-^     ]s[Qt;  q[  ^ya^j-  only,  but  detractions  rude, 
Guided  by  faith  and  matchless  fortitude, 
To  peace  and  truth  thy  glorious  way  hast  ploughed, 
And  on  the  neck  of  crowned  Fortune  proud 
Hast  reared  God's  trophies,  and  his  work  pursued  ; 
While  Darwen  stream,  with  blood  of  Scots  imbrued, 
And  Dunbar  field  resounds  thy  praises  loud, 
And  Worcester's  laureate  wreath  :  yet  much  remains 
To  conquer  still  ;  Peace  hath  her  victories 
No  less  renowned  than  War  :   new  foes  arise. 
Threatening  to  bind  our  souls  with  secular  chains  : — 
Help  us  to  save  free  conscience  from  the  paw 
Of  hireling  wolves,  whose  gospel  is  their  maw. 

CXLVII 

TO   SLR  HENRY    VANE    THE    YOUNGER. 
"X  /"ANE,  young  in  years,  but  in  sage  counsel  old, 

Than  whom  a  better  senator  ne'er  held 
The  helm  of  Rome,  when  gowns,  not  arms,  repelled 
The  fierce  Epirot  and  the  African  bold, 
Whether  to  settle  peace,  or  to  unfold 
The  drift  of  hollow  states  hard  to  be  spelled  ; 
Then  to  advise  how  War  may  best,  upheld. 
Move  by  her  two  main  nerves,  iron  and  gold. 
In  all  her  equipage  ;  besides  to  know 
Both  spiritual  power  and  civil,  what  each  means, 
What  severs  each,  thou  hast  learned,  which  few  have 

done  : 
The  bounds  of  either  sword  to  thee  we  owe  : 
Therefore  on  thy  firm  hand  Religion  leans 
In  peace  and  reckons  thee  her  eldest  son. 


English  Sonnets  75 

CXLVIII 

ON  THE  LATE  MASSACRE  IN  PIEDMONT. 

A  VENGE,  O  Lord,  thy  slaughtered  saints,  whose     John  Milton 
bones  1608—1674 

Lie  scattered  on  the  Alpine  mountains  cold  ; 
Even  them  who  kept  thy  truth  so  pure  of  old, 
When  all  our  fathers  worshipped  stocks  and  stones, 
Forget  not  ;  in  thy  book  record  their  groans 
Who  were  thy  sheep,  and  in  their  ancient  fold 
Slain  by  the  bloody  Piemontese,  that  rolled 
Mother  with  infant  down  the  rocks.     Their  moans 
The  vales  redoubled  to  the  hills,  and  they 
To  Heaven.     Their  martyred  blood  and  ashes  sow 
O'er  all  the  Italian  fields,  where  still  doth  sway 
The  triple  Tyrant  ;  that  from  these  may  grow 
A  hundredfold,  who  having  learnt  thy  way, 
Early  may  fly  the  Babylonian  woe. 


CXLIX 

"\ ^/"HEN  I  consider  how  my  light  is  spent 

Ere  half  my  days  in  this  dark  world  and  wide, 
And  that  one  talent,  which  is  death  to  hide, 
Lodged  with  me  useless,  though  my  soul  more  bent 
To  serve  therewith  my  Maker,  and  present 
My  true  account,  lest  He,  returning,  chide  ; 
'  Doth  God  exact  day-labour,  light  denied  ? ' 
I  fondly  ask.     But  Patience,  to  prevent 
That  murmur,  soon  replies  :  '  God  doth  not  need 
Either  man's  work  or  his  own  gifts.     Who  best 
Bear  his  mild  yoke,  they  serve  him  best.     His  state 
Is  kingly.     Thousands,  at  his  bidding,  speed 
And  post  o'er  land  and  ocean  without  rest  ; — 
They  also  serve  who  only  stand  and  wait.' 


76  A  Treasury  of 

CL 

John  Milton     T'   AWRENCE,  of  virtuous  father  virtuous  son, 
1608— 1674       -*— '     Now  that  the  fields  are  dank  and  ways  are  mire, 
Where  shall  we  sometimes  meet,  and  by  the  fire 
Help  waste  a  sullen  day,  what  may  be  won 
From  the  hard  season  gaining  ?     Time  will  run 
On  smoother,  till  Favonius  re-inspire 
The  frozen  earth,  and  clothe  in  fresh  attire 
The  lily  and  rose,  that  neither  sowed  nor  spun. 
What  neat  repast  shall  feast  us,  light  and  choice, 
Of  Attic  taste,  with  wine  ?  whence  we  may  rise 
To  hear  the  lute  well  touched,  or  artful  voice 
Warble  immortal  notes  and  Tuscan  air. 
He  who  of  those  delights  can  judge,  and  spare 
To  interpose  them  oft,  is  not  unwise. 


CLI 

^YRIACK,  whose  grandsire  on  the  royal  bench 

Of  British  Themis,  with  no  mean  applause. 
Pronounced,  and  in  his  volumes  taught,  our  laws, 
Which  others  at  their  bar  so  often  wrench, 
To-day  deep  thoughts  resolve  with  me  to  drench 
In  mirth  that  after  no  repenting  draws  ; 
Let  Euclid  rest  and  Archimedes  pause, 
And  what  the  Swede  intends,  and  what  the  French. 
To  measure  life  learn  thou  betimes,  and  know 
Toward  solid  good  what  leads  the  nearest  way  ; 
For  other  things  mild  Heaven  a  time  ordains. 
And  disapproves  that  care,  though  wise  in  show. 
That  with  superfluous  burden  loads  the  day, 
And,  when  God  sends  a  cheerful  hour,  refrains. 


English  Sonnets  77  ; 

1 

CLII  I 

1 

/^YRIACK,  this  three-years-day  these  eyes,  though    John  Milton 

^^     clear,  1608— 1674        ^ 

To  outward  view,  of  blemish  or  of  spot,  j 

Bereft  of  light,  their  seeing  have  forgot ;  ! 

Nor  to  their  idle  orbs  doth  sight  appear 

Of  sun,  or  moon,  or  star,  throughout  the  year,  i 

Or  man,  or  woman.     Yet  I  argue  not 

Against  Heaven's  hand  or  will,  nor  bate  a  jot  j 

Of  heart  or  hope,  but  still  bear  up  and  steer  1 

Right  onward.     What  supports  me,  dost  thou  ask  ?  1 

The  conscience,  friend,  to  have  lost  them  overplied  : 

In  Liberty's  defence,  my  noble  task, 

Of  which  all  Europe  rings  from  side  to  side. 

This  thought  might  lead  me  through  the  world's  vain  mask, 

Content  though  blind,  had  I  no  better  guide. 


1 

\ 
i 

CLIII  I 

A/TETHOUGHT  I  saw  my  late  espoused  saint  \ 

Brought  to  me  like  Alcestis  from  the  grave,  1 

Whom  Jove's  great  son  to  her  glad  husband  gave,  i 

Rescued  from  Death  by  force,  though  pale  and  faint.  I 

Mine,  as  whom  washed  from  spot  of  child-bed  taint  ' 

Purification  in  the  Old  Law  did  save,  i 

And  such,  as  yet  once  more  I  trust  to  have 
Full  sight  of  her  in  Heaven  without  restraint. 

Came  vested  all  in  white,  pure  as  her  mind  :  1 

Her  face  was  veiled  ;  yet  to  my  fancied  sight 
Love,  sweetness,  goodness,  in  her  person  shined 
So  clear,  as  in  no  face  with  more  delight. 
But  oh  !  as  to  embrace  me  she  inclined,  j 

I  waked,  she  fled,  and  day  brought  back  my  night.  j 

i 

I 


©nb  of  §0oh  4^}x5t 


Treasury  of  English  So7ineis 


^ook  Sccoub 


CLIV 


TO  RICHARD  OWEN  CAMBRIDGE. 


/^AMBRIDGE,  with  whom,  my  pilot  and  my  guide, 
^^     Pleased  I  have  traversed  thy  Sabrina's  flood, 
Both  where  she  foams  impetuous,  soiled  with  mud, 
And  where  she  peaceful  rolls  her  golden  tide  ; 
Never,  O  never  let  ambition's  pride, 
(Too  oft  pretexed  with  our  country's  good,) 
And  tinselled  prmp,  despised  when  understood, 
Or  thirst  of  wealth  thee  from  her  banks  divide  ! 
Reflect  how  calmly,  like  her  infant  wave, 
Flows  the  clear  current  of  a  private  life  ;  ' 
See  the  wide  public  stream,  by  tempests  tost, 
Of  every  changing  wind  the  sport  or  slave, 
Soiled  with  corruption,  vexed  with  party  strife. 
Covered  with  wrecks  of  peace  and  honour  lost. 

79 


Thomas 
Edwards 

1699— 1757 


8o 


A   Treasury  of 


Benjamin 
Stillingfleet 

1702 — 1771 


CLV 
TO    WILLIAMSON. 

WHEN  I  behold  thee,  blameless  Williamson, 
Wrecked  like  an  infant  on  a  savage  shore, 
While  others  round  on  borrowed  pinions  soar, 
My  busy  fancy  calls  thy  thread  misspun  ; 
Till  Faith  instructs  me  the  deceit  to  shun. 
While  thus  she  speaks  :  '  Those  wings  that  from  the 

store 
Of  virtue  were  not  lent,  howe'er  they  bore 
In  this  gross  air,  will  melt  when  near  the  sun. 
The  truly  ambitious  wait  for  Nature's  time, 
Content  by  certain  though  by  slow  degrees 
To  mount  above  the  reach  of  vulgar  flight ; 
Nor  is  that  man  confined  to  this  low  clime 
Who  but  the  extremest  skirts  of  glory  sees, 
And  hears  celestial  echoes  with  delight.' 


Thomas  Gray 
1716 — 1771 


CLVI 
ON  THE  DEATH  OF  MR.  RICHARD   WEST. 

TN  vain  to  me  the  smiling  mornings  shine, 
■*•     And  reddening  Phoebus  lifts  his  golden  fire  ; 
The  birds  in  vain  their  amorous  descant  join. 
Or  cheerful  fields  resume  their  green  attire  : 
These  ears,  alas  !  for  other  notes  repine, 
A  different  object  do  these  eyes  require  ; 
My  lonely  anguish  melts  no  heart  but  mine. 
And  in  my  breast  the  imperfect  joys  expire. 
Yet  morning  smiles  the  busy  race  to  cheer, 
And  new-born  pleasure  brings  to  happier  men  ; 
The  fields  to  all  their  wonted  tribute  bear. 
To  warm  their  little  loves  the  birds  complain  : 
I  fruitless  mourn  to  him  that  cannot  hear. 
And  weep  the  more  because  I  weep  in  vain. 


English  Son?iets 


8i 


A 


CLVII 
ANNIVERSARY. 

FEB.    23,    1795. 

PLAINTIVE  sonnet  flowed  from  Milton's  pen 
When  Time  had  stolen  his  three-and-twentieth 
year  : 
Say,  shall  not  I  then  shed  one  tuneful  tear, 
Robbed  by  the  thief  of  three-score  years  and  ten  ? 
No  !  for  the  foes  of  all  hfe-lengthened  men, 
Trouble  and  toil,  approach  not  yet  too  near ; 
Reason,  meanwhile,  and  health,  and  memory  dear 
Hold  unimpaired  their  weak  yet  wonted  reign  : 
Still  round  my  sheltered  lawn  I  pleased  can  stray  ; 
Still  trace  my  sylvan  blessings  to  their  spring  : 
Being  of  Beings  !  yes,  that  silent  lay 
Which  musing  Gratitude  delights  to  sing. 
Still  to  thy  sapphire  throne  shall  Faith  convey, 
And  Hope,  the  cherub  of  unwearied  wing. 


William 
Mason 

1725— 1797 


CLVIII 
WRITTEN  AFTER  SEEING   WILTON-HOUSE. 

"C'ROM  Pembroke's  princely  dome, where  mimic  Art 
Decks  with  a  magic  hand  the  dazzling  bowers, 
Its  living  hues  where  the  warm  pencil  pours, 
And  breathing  forms  from  the  rude  marble  start, 
How  to  life's  humbler  scene  can  I  depart ! 
My  breast  all  glowing  from  those  gorgeous  towers, 
In  my  low  cell  how  cheat  the  sullen  hours  ! 
Vain  the  complaint  ;  for  Fancy  can  impart 
(To  Fate  superior,  and  to  Fortune's  doom) 
Whate'er  adorns  the  stately-storied  hall :  ' 
She,  'mid  the  dungeon's  solitary  gloom, 
Can  dress  the  Graces  in  their  Attic  pall ; 
Bid  the  green  landscape's  vernal  beauty  bloom, 
And  in  bright  trophies  clothe  the  twilight  wall. 


i 
1 

Thomas         j 
Warton         ( 

1728 — 1790        I 


A  Treasury  of- 


Thomas 
Warton 

1728 — 1790 


CLIX 

WRITTEN  A  T  WINSLADE  IN  HAMPSHIRE. 

■\  1  riNSLADE,  thy  beech-capped  hills,  with  wav- 
ing grain 
Mantled,  thy  chequered  views  of  wood  and  lawn, 
Whilom  could  charm,  or  when  the  gradual  dawn 
'Gan  the  gray  mist  with  orient  purple  stain. 
Or  evening  glimmered  o'er  the  folded  train  : 
The  fairest  landscapes  whence  my  Muse  has  drawn. 
Too  free  with  servile  courtly  phrase  to  fawn, 
Too  weak  to  try  the  buskin's  stately  strain. 
Yet  now  no  more  thy  slopes  of  beech  and  corn, 
Nor  views  invite,  since  he  far  distant  strays 
With  whom  I  traced  their  sweets  at  eve  and  morn, 
From  Albion  far,  to  cull  Hesperian  bays. 
In  this  alone  they  please,  howe'er  forlorn. 
That  still  they  can  recall  those  happier  days. 


CLX 

WRITTEN  IN  A  BLANK  LEAF  OF 

dugdale's  moxasticon. 

lp\EEM  not  devoid  of  elegance  the  sage, 
^^^     By  Fancy's  genuine  feelings  unbeguiled. 
Of  painful  pedantry  the  poring  child. 
Who  turns  of  these  proud  domes  the  historic  page, 
Now  sunk  by  Time  and  Henry's  fiercer  rage. 
Think'st  thou  the  warbling  Muses  never  smiled 
On  his  lone  hours  ?     Ingenuous  views  engage 
His  thoughts,  on  themes,  unclassic  falsely  styled, 
Intent.     While  cloistered  Piety  displays 
Her  mouldering  roll,  the  piercing  eye  explores 
New  manners,  and  the  pomp  of  elder  days. 
Whence  culls  the  pensive  bard  his  pictured  stores. 
Nor  rough  nor  barren  are  the  winding  ways    . 
Of  hoar  Antiquity,  but  strewn  with  flowers. 


English  Sonnets  ^t^ 

CLXI 
ON  KING  ARTHUR'S  ROUND  TABLE, 

AT   WINCHESTER. 

WHERE  Venta's  Norman  castle  still  uprears  Thomas 

^  Wharton 

Its  raftered  hall,  that  o'er  the  grassy  foss  - — 

°       ^  1728— 1790 
And  scattered  flinty  fragments  clad  in  moss, 

On  yonder  steep  in  naked  state  appears  ; 

High-hung  remains,  the  pride  of  warlike  years, 

Old  Arthur's  Board  :  on  the  capacious  round 

Some  British  pen  has  sketched  the  names  renowned, 

In  marks  obscure,  of  his  immortal  peers. 

Though  joined  by  magic  skill,  with  many  a  rime. 

The  Druid  frame,  unhonoured,  falls  a  prey 

To  the  slow  vengeance  of  the  wizard  Time, 

And  fade  the  British  characters  away  ; 

Yet  Spenser's  page,  that  chaunts  in  verse  sublime 

Those  chiefs,  shall  live,  unconscious  of  decay. 


CLXII 

TO  THE  RIVER  LODON. 

A  H  !  what  a  weary  race  my  feet  have  run, 

Since  first  I  trod  thy  banks  with  alders  crowned, 
And  thought  my  way  was  all  through  fairy  ground. 
Beneath  thy  azure  sky  and  golden  sun  : 
Where  first  my  Muse  to  lisp  her  notes  begun ! 
While  pensive  Memory  traces  back  the  round 
Which  fills  the  varied  interval  between  ; 
Much  pleasure,  more  of  sorrow,  marks  the  scene. 
Sweet  native  stream  !  those  skies  and  sun  so  pure 
No  more  return,  to  cheer  my  evening  road  ! 
Yet  still  one  joy  remains, — that  not  obscure, 
Nor  useless,  all  my  vacant  days  have  flowed. 
From  youth's  gay  dawn  to  manhood's  prime  mature  ; 
Nor  with  the  Muse's  laurel  unbestowed. 


84 


A  Treasury  of 


William 

COWPER 

1731 — -,1800 


CLXIII 

TO  MRS.  UN  WIN. 

ly /TARY  !  I  want  a  lyre  with  other  strings, 

^^^     Such  aid  from  heaven  as  some  have  feigned 

they  drew, 
An  eloquence  scarce  given  to  mortals,  new 
And  undebased  by  praise  of  meaner  things  ; 
That,  ere  through  age  or  woe  I  shed  my  wings, 
I  may  record  thy  worth  with  honour  due, 
In  verse  as  musical  as  thou  art  true. 
And  that  immortalizes  whom  it  sings. 
But  thou  hast  little  need.     There  is  a  Book 
By  seraphs  writ  with  beams  of  heavenly  light, 
On  which  the  eyes  of  God  not  rarely  look, 
A  chronicle  of  actions  just  and  bright ; — 
There  all  thy  deeds,  my  faithful  Mary,  shine  ; 
And  since  thou  own'st  that  praise,  I  spare  thee  mine. 


Anna  Seward 
1747 — 1809 


CLXIV 

DECEMBER  MORNING. 

T  LOVE  to  rise  ere  gleams  the  tardy  light, 

Winter's  pale  dawn  ;  and  as  warm  fires  illume, 
And  cheerful  tapers  shine  around  the  room. 
Through  misty  windows  bend  my  musing  sight. 
Where,  round  the  dusky  lawn,  the  mansions  white. 
With  shutters  closed,  peer  faintly  through  the  gloom 
That  slow  recedes  ;  while  yon  grey  spires  assume. 
Rising  from  their  dark  pile,  an  added  height 
By  indistinctness  given. — Then  to  decree 
The  grateful  thoughts  to  God,  ere  they  unfold 
To  friendship  or  the  Muse,  or  seek  with  glee 
Wisdom's  rich  page.    O  hours  more  worth  than  gold, 
By  whose  blest  use  we  lengthen  life,  and,  free 
From  drear  decays  of  age,  outlive  the  old  ! 


English  Sonnets  85 

CXLV 
WRITTEN  AT  THE  CLOSE   OF  SPRING. 

'X'HE  garlands  fade  that  Spring  so  lately  wove,  Charlotte 

Each  simple  flower, which  she  had  nursed  in  dew,  — " 

Anemonies,  that  spangled  every  grove,  ''"^^ 

The  primrose  wan,  and  harebell  mildly  blue. 
No  more  shall  violets  linger  in 'the  dell, 
Or  purple  orchis  variegate  the  plain, 
Till  Spting  again  shall  call  forth  every  bell, 
And  dress  with  humid  hands  her  wreaths  again. 
Ah,  poor  humanity  !  so  frail,  so  fair 
Are  the  fond  visions  of  thy  early  day. 
Till  tyrant  passion  and  corrosive  care, 
Bid  all  thy  fairy  colours  fade  away. 
Another  May  new  buds  and  flowers  shall  bring  : 
Ah  !  why  has  happiness  no  second  Spring? 


CLXVI 

O  HOULD  the  lone  wanderer,  fainting  on  his  waj^,  ; 

Rest  for  a  moment  of  the  sultry  hours,  | 

And  though  his  path  through  thorns  and  roughness  lay,  1 

Pluck  the  wild  rose  or  woodbine's  gadding  flowers, 
Weaving  gay  wreaths  beneath  some  sheltering  tree,  ' 

The  sense  of  sorrow  he  awhile  may  lose  :  1 

So  have  I  sought  thy  flowers,  fair  Poesy  ! 
So  charmed  my  way  with  friendship  and  the  Muse. 
But  darker  now  grows  life's  unhappy  day,  j 

Dark  with  new  clouds  of  evil  yet  to  come  ;  i 

Her  pencil  sickening  Fancy  throws  away, 
And  weary  Hope  reclines  upon  the  tomb. 

And  points  my  wishes  to  that  tranquil  shore,  i 

Where  the  pale  spectre  Care  pursues  no  more.  * 


86 


A  Treasury  of 


William 
RoscoE 

1753— 1831 


CLXVII 
TO  MY  BOOKS  ON  PARTING    WITH   THEM. 

A  S  one  who,  destined  from  his  friends  to  part, 
■^^     Regrets  his  loss,  yet  hopes  again  erewhile 
To  share  their  converse  and  enjoy  their  smile. 
And  tempers  as  he  may  affliction's  dart, — 
Thus,  loved  associates  !  chiefs  of  elder  Art ! 
Teachers  of  wisdom  !  who  could  once  beguile 
My  tedious  hours,  and  lighten  every  toil,       » 
I  now  resign  you  :  nor  with  fainting  heart ; 
For  pass  a  few  short  years,  or  days,  or  hours, 
And  happier  seasons  may  their  dawn  unfold, 
And  all  your  sacred  fellowship  restore  ; 
Vvlien,  freed  from  earth,  unlimited  its  powers, 
Mind  shall  with  mind  direct  communion  hold, 
And  kindred  spirits  meet  to  part  no  more. 


CLXVIII 


Helen  Maria 
Williams 

1762 — 1828 


TO  HOPE. 

/^  EVER  skilled  to  wear  the  form  we  love  ! 
^^^     To  bid  the  shapes  of  fear  and  grief  depart ; 
Come,  gentle  Hope  !  with  one  gay  smile  remove 
The  lasting  sadness  of  an  aching  heart. 
Thy  voice,  benign  enchantress  !  let  me  hear  ; 
Say  that  for  me  some  pleasures  yet  shall  bloom, — 
That  fancy's  radiance,  friendship's  precious  tear. 
Shall  soften,  or  shall  chase,  misfortune's  gloom. 
But  cqme  not  glowing  in  the  dazzling  ray 
Which  once  with  dear  illusions  charmed  my  eye ; 
O,  strew  no  more,  sweet  flatterer  !  on  my  way 
The  flowers  I  fondly  thought  too  bright  to  die  : 
Visions  less  fair  will  soothe  my  pensive  breast, 
That  asks  not  happiness,  but  longs  for  rest. 


Eitglish  Sonnets 


87 


CLXIX 


ON  ECHO  AND  SILENCE. 

TN  eddying  course  when  leaves  began  to  fly, 

And  Autumn  in  her  lap  the  store  to  strew, 
As  'mid  wild  scenes  I  chanced  the  Muse  to  woo, 
Through  glens  untrod  and  woods  that  frowned  on  high, 
Two  sleeping  nymphs  with  wonder  mute  I  spy  ! — 
And  lo,  she's  gone  ! — in  robe  of  dark  green  hue, 
'Twas  Echo  from  her  sister  Silence  flew  : 
For  quick  the  hunter's  horn  resounded  to  the  sky  ! 
In  shade  affrighted  Silence  melts  away. 
Not  so  her  sister  ! — hark,  for  onward  still 
With  far-heard  step  she  takes  her  listening  way, 
Bounding  from  rock  to  rock,  and  hill  to  hill  ! 
Ah,  mark  the  merry  maid  in  mockful  play 
With  thousand  mimic  tones  the  laughing  forest  fill. 


Sir  Samuel 
Egerton 
Brydges 

1762— 1837 


CLXX 

^~\  TIME  !  who  know'st  a  lenient  hand  to  lay 

^~^     Softest  on  sorrow's  wound,  and  slowly  thence, 

Lulling  to  sad  repose  the  weary  sense. 

The  faint  pang  stealest  unperceived  away  ; 

On  thee  I  rest  my  only  hope  at  last. 

And  think,  when  thou  hast  dried  the  bitter  tear 

That  flows  in  vain  o'er  all  my  soul  held  dear, 

I  may  look  back  on  every  sorrow  past. 

And  meet  life's  peaceful  evening  with  a  smile  • — 

As  some  lone  bird,  at  day's  departing  hour, 

Sings  in  the  sunbeam,  of  the  transient  shower 

Forgetful,  though  its  wings  are  wet  the  while  : — 

Yet  ah  I  how  much  must  that  poor  heart  endure. 

Which  hopes  from  thee,  and  thee  alone,  a  cure  ! 


WlLLIAlI 

Lisle  Bowles 
1762 — 1850 


88  A   Treasury  of 

CLXXI 
OS  TEND  : 

ON   HEARING  THE   BELLS    AT  SEA. 

Lisle'To^wles     LTOW  sweet  the  tuneful  bells'  responsive  peal ! 
176^850  As  when  at  opening  dawn  the  fragrant  breeze 

Touches  the  trembling  sense  of  pale  disease, 
So  piercing  to  my  heart  their  force  I  feel. 
And  hark  !  with  lessening  cadence  now  they  fall, 
And  now  along  the  white  and  level  tide 
They  fling  their  melancholy  music  wide  ; 
Bidding  me  many  a  tender  thought  recall 
Of  summer  days,  and  those  delightful  years 
When  by  my  native  streams,  in  life's  fair  prime. 
The  mournful  magic  of  their  mingling  chime 
First  waked  my  wondering  childhood  into  tears  ! 
But  seeming  now,  when  all  those  days  are  o'er,  . 
The  sounds  of  joy  once  heard  and  heard  no  more. 


CLXXII 

NOVEMBER,  1793. 

"  I  "HERE  is  strange  music  in  the  stirring  wind. 

When  lowers  the  autumnal  eve,  and  all  alone 
To  the  dark  wood's  cold  covert  thou  art  gone, 
Whose  ancient  trees  on  the  rough  slope  reclined 
Rock,  and  at  times  scatter  their  tresses  sere. 
If  in  such  shades,  beneath  their  murmuring. 
Thou  late  hast  passed  the  happier  hours  of  spring. 
With  sadness  thou  wilt  mark  the  fading  year  ; 
Chiefly  if  one,  with  whom  such  sweets  at  morn 
Or  evening  thou  hast  shared,  far  off  shall  stray. 
O  Spring,  return  !  return,  auspicious  May  ! 
But  sad  will  be  thy  coming,  and  forlorn. 
If  she  return  not  with  thy  cheering  ray, 
Who  from  these  shades  is  gone,  gone  far  away. 


English  Sonnets  89 

CLXXIII 

TO   VALCLUSA. 

Thomas 


1762 — 1788 


VyHAT  though,  Valclusa,  the  fond  bard  be  fled  S^l 

That  wooed  his  fair  in  thy  sequestered  bowers, 
Long  loved  her  Hving,  long  bemoaned  her  dead. 
And  hung  her  visionary  shrine  with  flowers  ? 
What  though  no  more  he  teach  thy  shades  to  mourn 
The  hapless  chances  that  to  love  belong, 
As  erst,  when  drooping  o'er  her  turf  forlorn, 
He  charmed  wild  Echo  with  his  plaintive  song  ? 
Yet  still,  enamoured  of  the  tender  tale, 
Pale  Passion  haunts  thy  grove's  romantic  gloom, 
Yet  still  soft  music  breathes  in  every  gale. 
Still  undecayed  the  fairy- garlands  bloom, 
Still  heavenly  incense  fills  each  fragrant  vale. 
Still  Petrarch's  Genius  weeps  o'er  Laura's  tomb. 


CLXXIV  I 

SUPPOSED    TO  BE    WRITTEN  A  T  LEMNOS.  \ 

/^N  this  lone  isle,  whose  rugged  rocks  affright  j 

^-^^     The  cautious  pilot,  ten  revolving  years  ! 

Great  Psean's  son,  unwonted  erst  to  tears,  | 

Wept  o'er  his  wound  :  alike  each  rolling  light  ! 

Of  heaven  he  watched,  and  blamed  its  lingering  flight  ;  \ 

By  day  the  sea-mew  screaming  round  his  cave  j 

Drove  slumber  from  his  eyes  ;  the  chiding  wave  ! 

And  savage  bowlings  chased  his  dreams  by  night.  ■! 

Hope  still  was  his  :  in  each  low  breeze  that  sighed  ' 
Through  his  rude  grot  he  heard  a  coming  oar. 

In  each  white  cloud  a  coming  sail  he  spied  ;  \ 
Nor  seldom  listened  to  the  fancied  roar 
Of  Oeta's  torrents,  or  the  hoarser  tide 
That  parts  famed  Trachis  from  the  Euboic  shore. 


1770— 1850 


9©  A  Treasury  of 

CLXXV 

PERSONAL    TALK. 

I 

William        t  ^M  not  One  wlio  much  or  oft  delight 

Wordsworth       |  o 

—  To  season  my  fireside  with  personal  talk, — 

Of  friends,  who  live  within  an  easy  walk, 
Or  neighbours,  daily,  weekly,  in  my  sight  : 
And,  for  my  chance-acquaintance,  ladies  bright, 
Sons,  mothers,  maidens  withering  on  the  stalk. 
These  all  wear  out  of  me,  like  Forms  with  chalk 
Painted  on  rich  men's  floors  for  one  feast-night. 
Better  than  such  discourse  doth  silence  long, 
Long,  barren  silence,  square  with  my  desire  ; 
To  sit  without  emotion,  hope,  or  aim, 
In  the  loved  presence  of  my  cottage-fire. 
And  listen  to  the  flapping  of  the  flame. 
Or  kettle  whispering  its  faint  undersong. 

CLXXVI 


^^V^ET  life,'  you  say, '  is  life  ;  we  have  seen  and  see, 

And  with  a  living  pleasure  we  describe  ; 
And  fits  of  sprightly  malice  do  but  bribe 
The  languid  mind  into  activity. 
Sound  sense,  and  love  itself,  and  mirth  and  glee 
Are  fostered  by  the  comment  and  the  gibe.' 
Even  be  it  so  :  yet  still  among  your  tribe. 
Our  daily  world's  true  Worldlings,  rank  not  me  ! 
Children  are  blest,  and  powerful  ;  their  world  lies 
More  justly  balanced  ;   partly  at  their  feet. 
And  part  far  from  them  : — sweetest  melodies 
Are  those  that  are  by  distance  made  more  sweet  ; 
Whose  mind  is  but  the  mind  of  his  own  eyes, 
He  is  a  Slave  ;  the  meanest  we  can  meet ! 


English  Sonnets  91 


CLXXVII  j 


"\  \  7INGS  have  we, — and  as  far  as  we  can  go  William 


Wordsworth 

We  may  find  pleasure  :  wilderness  and  wood,  — „ 

■'  '■  '       1770 — 1850 


Blank  ocean  and  mere  sky,  support  that  mood 

Which  with  the  lofty  sanctifies  the  low. 

Dreams,  books,  are  each  a  world;  and  books,  we  know, 

Are  a  substantial  world,  both  pure  and  good  : 

Round  these,  with  tendrils  strong  as  flesh  and  blood, 

Our  pastime  and  our  happiness  will  grow. 

There  find  I  personal  themes,  a  plenteous  store, 

Matter  wherein  right  voluble  I  am, 

To  which  I  listen  with  a  ready  ear  ; 

Two  shall  be  named,  pre-eminently  dear, — 

The  gentle  Lady  married  to  the  Moor ; 

And  heavenly  Una  with  her  milk-white  Lamb. 


CLXXVIII 

4 

IVTOR  can  I  not  believe  but  that  hereby 

Great  gains  are  mine  ;  for  thus  I  live  remote 
From  evil-speaking  ;  rancour,  never  sought. 
Comes  to  me  not  ;  malignant  truth,  or  lie. 
Hence  have  I  genial  seasons,  hence  have  I 
Smooth  passions,  smooth  discourse,  and  joyous  thought 
And  thus  from  day  to  day  my  little  boat 
Rocks  in  its  harbour,  lodging  peaceably. 
Blessings  be  with  them — and  eternal  praise, 
Who  gave  us  nobler  loves,  and  nobler  cares — 
The  Poets,  who  on  earth  have  made  us  heirs 
Of  truth  and  pure  delight  by  heavenly  lays  ! 
Oh  !  might  my  name  be  numbered  among  theirs, 
Then  gladly  would  I  end  my  mortal  days. 


92  A   Treasury  of 

CLXXIX 

William         IVJUNS  fret  not  at  their  convent's  narrow  room 

Wordsworth 


1770 — 1850 


And  hermits  are  contented  with  their  cells  ; 
And  students  with  their  pensive  citadels  : 
Maids  at  the  wheel,  the  weaver  at  his  loom, 
Sit  blithe  and  happy  ;  bees  that  soar  for  bloom, 
High  as  the  highest  Peak  of  Furness-fells, 
Will  murmur  by  the  hour  in  foxglove  bells  : 
In  truth,  the  prison  unto  which  we  doom 
Ourselves,  no  prison  is  :   and  hence  for  me. 
In  sundry  moods,  'twas  pastime  to  be  bound 
Within  the  Sonnet's  scanty  plot  of  ground  ; 
Pleased  if  some  Souls  (for  such  there  needs  must  be) 
Who  have  felt  the  weight  of  too  much  liberty, 
Should  find  brief  solace  there,  as  I  have  found. 


CLXXX 

ADMONITION. 

"X/ES,  there  is  holy  pleasure  in  thine  eye  ! — 

The  lovely  Cottage  in  the  guardian  nook 
Hath  stirred  thee  deeply  ;  with  its  own  dear  brook, 
Its  own  small  pasture,  almost  its  own  sky  ! 
But  covet  not  the  Abode  ; — forbear  to  sigh. 
As  many  do,  repining  while  they  look  ; 
Intruders — who  would  tear  from  Nature's  book 
This  precious  leaf,  with  harsh  impiety. 
Think  what  the  Home  must  be  if  it  were  thine. 
Even  thine,  though  few  thy  wants  ! — Roof,  window, 

door. 
The  very  flowers  are  sacred  to  the  Poor, 
The  roses  to  the  porch  which  they  entwine : 
Yea,  all,  that  now  enchants  thee,  from  the  day 
On  which  it  should  be  touched,  would  melt  away  ! 


Etiglish  Sonnets  93 

CLxxx'i 
T'HERE  is  a  little  unpretending  Rill  William 


Of  limpid  water,  humbler  far  than  aught 


Wordsworth 
1770 — 1850 


That  ever  among  Men  or  Naiads  sought 

Notice  or  name  ! — It  quivers  down  the  hill,  1 

Furrowing  its  shallow  way  with  dubious  will  ;  ; 

Yet  to  my  mind  this  scanty  Stream  is  brought  j 

Oftener  than  Ganges  or  the  Nile  ;  a  thought  \ 

Of  private  recollection  sweet  and  still !  i 

Months  perish  with  their  moons  ;  year  treads  on  year  ;  : 

But,  faithful  Emma  !  thou  with  me  canst  say  ; 

That,  while  ten  thousand  pleasures  disappear,  i 

And  flies  their  memory  fast  almost  as  they,  ■ 

The  immortal  Spirit  of  one  happy  day  , 

Lingers  beside  that  Rill,  in  vision  clear.  \ 


CLXXXII 
UPON  THE  SIGHT  OF  A  BEA  UTIFUL  PICTURE, 

PAINTED   BY   SIR    G.    H.    BEAUMONT,    BART 

TD RAISED  be  the  Art  whose  subtle  power  could  stay 


Yon  cloud,  and  fix  it  in  that  glorious  shape  ;  j 

Nor  would  permit  the  thin  smoke  to  escape,  ] 

Nor  those  bright  sunbeams  to  forsake  the  day  ;  | 

Which  stopped  that  band  of  travellers  on  their  way,  j 

Ere  they  were  lost  within  the  shady  wood  ;  ' 

And  showed  the  Bark  upon  the  glassy  flood  1 

For  ever  anchored  in  her  sheltering  bay. 
Soul-soothing  Art !  whom  Morning,  Noon-tide,  Even, 
Do  serve  with  all  their  changeful  pageantry ; 
Thou,  with  ambition  modest  yet  sublime. 
Here,  for  the  sight  of  mortal  man,  hast  given 
To  one  brief  moment  caught  from  fleeting  time 
The  appropriate  calm  of  blest  eternity. 


177° — 1850 


94  ^  Treasury  of 

CLXXXIII 

TO    SLEEP. 

William        Tj'OND  words  have  oft  been  spoken  to  thee,  Sleep  ! 
oRDsvvoRTH     _|^       ^^^  ^^^  ^^^^  ^^^  ^^  ^lox^  of  tendcicst  names; 

The  very  sweetest  Fancy  culls  or  frames, 
When  thankfulness  of  heart  is  strong  and  deep  ! 
Dear  Bosom-child  we  call  thee,  that  dost  steep 
In  rich  reward  all  suffering  ;  Balm  that  tames 
All  anguish  ;  Saint  that  evil  thoughts  and  aims 
Takest  away,  and  into  souls  dost  creep. 
Like  to  a  breeze  from  heaven.     Shall  I  alone, 
I  surely  not  a  man  ungently  made, 
Call  thee  worst  Tyrant  by  which  Flesh  is  crost  ? 
Perverse,  self-willed  to  own  and  to  disown. 
Mere  slave  of  them  who  never  for  thee  prayed. 
Still  last  to  come  where  thou  art  wanted  most  ! 


CLXXXIV 
TO   SLEEP. 

A   FLOCK  of  sheep  that  leisurely  pass  by, 
•^     One  after  one  ;  the  sound  of  rain,  and  bees 
Murmuring  ;  the  fall  of  rivers,  winds  and  seas. 
Smooth  fields,  white  sheets  of  water,  and  pure  sky  ; — 
I've  thought  of  all  by  turns,  and  yet  do  lie 
Sleepless  ;  and  soon  the  small  birds'  melodies 
Must  hear,  first  uttered  from  my  orchard  trees  ; 
And  the  first  cuckoo's  melancholy  cry. 
Even  thus  last  night,  and  two  nights  more,  I  lay, 
And  could  not  win  thee,  Sleep  !  by  any  stealth  : 
So  do  not  let  me  wear  to-night  away  : 
Without  Thee  what  is  all  the  morning's  wealth  ? 
Come,  blessed  barrier  between  day  and  day. 
Dear  mother  of  fresh  thoughts  and  joyous  health  ! 


English  Sonnets  95 

CLXXXV 

WRITTEN  UPON  A   BLANK  LEAF  IN 
"the  complete  angler." 

WHILE  flowinsf  rivers  yield  a  blameless  sport,  William 

°  •'  ^      .  Wordsworth 

Shall  live  the  name  of  Walton  :  Sage  benign! 


Whose  pen,  the  mysteries  of  the  rod  and  line 

Unfolding,  did  not  fruitlessly  exhort 

To  reverend  watching  of  each  still  report 

That  Nature  utters  from  her  rural  shrine. 

Meek,  nobly  versed  in  simple  discipline — 

He  found  the  longest  summer  day  too  short, 

To  his  loved  pastime  given  by  sedgy  Lee, 

Or  down  the  tempting  maze  of  Shawford  brook — 

Fairer  than  life  itself,  in  this  sweet  Book, 

The  cowslip-bank,  and  shady  willow-tree  ; 

And  the  fresh  meads — where  flowed,  from  every  nook 

Of  his  full  bosom,  gladsome  Piety  ! 


CLXXXVI 

/~*  RIEF,  thou  hast  lost  an  ever  ready  friend 

^■^     Now  that  the  cottage  Spinning-wheel  is  mute; 

And  Care — a  comforter  that  best  could  suit 

Her  froward  mood,  and  softliest  reprehend  ; 

And  Love — a  charmer's  voice,  that  used  to  lend, 

More  efficaciously  than  aught  that  flows 

From  harp  or  lute,  kind  influence  to  compose 

The  throbbing  pulse, — else  troubled  without  end  : 

Even  Joy  could  tell,  Joy  craving  truce  and  rest 

From  her  own  overflow,  what  power  sedate 

On  those  revolving  motions  did  await 

Assiduously — to  soothe  her  aching  breast  ; 

And,  to  a  point  of  just  relief,  abate 

The  mantling  triumphs  of  a  day  too  blest. 


1770 — 1850 


William 
Wordsworth 

1770^1850 


96  A  Treasury  of 

CLXXXVII 

CURPRISED  by  joy— impatient  as  the  Wind 

I  turned  to  share  the  transport — Oh!  with  whom 
But  Thee,  deep-buried  in  the  silent  tomb, 
That  spot  which  no  vicissitude  can  find  ? 
Love,  faithful  love,  recalled  thee  to  my  mind — 
But  how  could  I  forget  thee  ?    Through  what  power, 
Even  for  the  least  division  of  an  hour. 
Have  I  been  so  beguiled  as  to  be  blind 
To  my  most  grievous  loss  ! — That  thought's  return 
Was  the  worst  pang  that  sorrow  ever  bore, 
Save  one,  one  only,  when  I  stood  forlorn, 
Knowing  my  heart's  best  treasure  was  no  more  ; 
That  neither  present  time,  nor  years  unborn 
Could  to  my  sight  that  heavenly  face  restore. 


CLXXXVIII 

TT  is  a  beauteous  evening,  calm  and  free  ; 

The  holy  time  is  quiet  as  a  Nun 
Breathless  with  adoration  ;  the  broad  sun 
Is  sinking  down  in  its  tranquillity  ; 
The  gentleness  of  heaven  is  on  the  Sea  : 
Listen  !  the  mighty  Being  is  awake, 
And  doth  with  his  eternal  motion  make 
A  sound  like  thunder — everlastingly. 
Dear  Child  !   dear  Girl  !   that  walkest  with  me  here, 
If  thou  appear  untouched  by  solemn  thought, 
Thy  nature  is  not  therefore  less  divine  : 
Thou  liest  in  Abraham's  bosom  all  the  year ; 
And  worshipp'st  at  the  Temple's  inner  shrine, 
God  being  with  thee  when  we  know  it  not. 


English  Sonnets  97 

CLXXXIX 

THE  world  is  too  much  with  us  ;  late  and  soon,  William 

.  Wordsworth 

Getting  and  spending,  we  lay  waste  our  powers:  — 

Little  we  see  in  Nature  that  is  ours ;  '770—1  5 

We  have  given  our  hearts  away,  a  sordid  boon  ! 

This  Sea  that  bares  her  bosom  to  the  moon, 

The  winds  that  will  be  howling  at  all  hours 

And  are  up-gathered  now  like  sleeping  flowers  ; 

For  this,  for  every  thing,  we  are  out  of  tune  : 

It  moves  us  not. — Great  God  !  I'd  rather  be 

A  pagan  suckled  in  a  creed  outworn  ; 

So  might  I,  standing  on  this  pleasant  lea, 

Have  glimpses  that  would  make  me  less  forlorn  ; 

Have  sight  of  Proteus  rising  from  the  sea  ; 

Or  hear  old  Triton  blow  his  wreathed  horn. 


cxc 

A    VOLANT  Tribe  of  Bards  on  earth  are  found,  j 

Who,  while  the  flattering  Zephyrs  round  them  play,  ^ 

On  '  coignes  of  vantage  '  hang  their  nests  of  clay  ;  \ 

How  quickly,  from  that  aery  hold  unbound,  i 

Dust  for  oblivion  !,     To  the  solid  ground  i 

Of  nature  trusts  the  Mind  that  builds  for  aye  ;  j 

Convinced  that  there,  there  only,  she  can  lay  1 

Secure  foundations.     As  the  year  runs  round,  1 

Apart  she  toils  within  the  chosen  ring  ;  j 

While  the  stars  shine,  or  while  day's  purple  eye  j 

Is  gently  closing  with  the  flowers  of  spring  ;  ^j 

Where  even  the  motion  of  an  Angel's  wing  ! 

Would  interrupt  the  intense  tranquillity  ' 

Of  silent  hills,  and  more  than  silent  sky. 

H  •    \ 


William 

Wordsworth 


g8  A  Treasury  of 

cxci 

SCORN  not  the  Sonnet  ;  Critic,  you  have  frowned, 
Mindless  of  its  just  honours  :  with  this  key 
i77<^i85o       gj^^],5pg^j.g  unlocked  his  heart  ;  the  melody 

Of  this  small  lute  gave  ease  to  Petrarch's  wound  ; 

A  thousand  times  this  pipe  did  Tasso  sound  ; 

With  it  Camoens  soothed  an  exile's  grief  ; 

The  Sonnet  glittered  a  gay  myrtle  leaf 

Amid  the  cypress  with  which  Dante  crowned 

His  visionary  brow  ;  a  glow-worm  lamp 

It  cheered  mild  Spenser,  called  from  Faery-land 

To  struggle  through  dark  ways  ;  and  when  a  damp 

Fell  round  the  path  of  Milton,  in  his  hand 

The  Thing  became  a  trumpet,  whence  he  blew 

Soul-animating  strains — alas,  too  few  ! 


CXCII 
TO  B.  R.  HA  YDON. 

HIGH  is  our  calling,  Friend  !— Creative  Art 
(Whether  the  instrument  of  words  she  use, 
Or  pencil  pregnant  with  ethereal  hues,) 
Demands  the  service  of  a  mind  and  heart, 
Though  sensitive,  yet,  in  their  weakest  part, 
Heroically  fashioned — to  infuse 
Faith  in  the  whispers  of  the  lonely  Muse, 
While  the  whole  world  seems  adverse  to  desert. 
And  oh  !  when  Nature  sinks,  as  oft  she  may. 
Through  long-lived  pressure  of  obscure  distress, 
Still  to  be  strenuous  for  the  bright  reward, 
And  in  the  soul  admit  of  no  decay. 
Brook  no  continuance  of  weak-mindedness- 
Great  is  the  glory,  for  the  strife  is  hard  ! 


English  Sonnets  99 

CXCIII 

SEPTEMBER,  1815. 

T 1  miLE  not  a  leaf  seems  faded  ;  while  the  fields,     wo^^'^^sworth 

With  ripening  harvest  prodigally  fair,  177^850 

In  brightest  sunshine  bask  ;  this  nipping  air, 
Sent  from  some  distant  clime  where  Winter  wields 
His  icy  scimitar,  a  foretaste  yields 
Of  bitter  change,  and  bids  the  flowers  beware  ; 
And  whispers  to  the  silent  birds,  '  Prepare 
Against  the  threatening  foe  your  trustiest  shields.' 
For  me,  who  under  kindlier  laws  belong 
To  Nature's  tuneful  quire,  this  rustling  dry 
Through  leaves  yet  green,  and  yon  crystalline  sky, 
Announce  a  season  potent  to  renew, 
'Mid  frost  and  snow,  the  instinctive  joys  of  song, 
And  nobler  cares  than  listless  summer  knew. 


cxciv 

*  'T'HERE  is  a  pleasure  in  poetic  pains 

Which  only  Poets  know  : ' — 'twas  rightly  said  ; 
Whom  could  the  Muses  else  allure  to  tread 
Their  smoothest  paths,  to  wear  their  lightest  chains  ? 
When  happiest  Fancy  has  inspired  the  strains, 
How  oft  the  malice  of  one  luckless  word 
Pursues  the  Enthusiast  to  the  social  board, 
Haunts  him  belated  on  the  silent  plains  ! 
Yet  he  repines  not,  if  his  thought  stand  clear, 
At  last,  of  hindrance  and  obscurity. 
Fresh  as  the  star  that  crowns  the  brow  of  morn ; 
Bright,  speckless,  as  a  softly-moulded  tear 
The  moment  it  has  left  the  virgin's  eye, 
Or  rain-drop  lingering  on  the  pointed  thorn. 


loo  A  Treasiny  of 

cxcv 
William        T)R00K  !  whose  societv  the  Poet  seeks, 

WORDSVVOKTH  Vy  . 

Intent  his  wasted  spirits  to  renew  ; 


1770^1850 


And  whom  the  curious  Painter  doth  pursue 
Through  rocky  passes,  among  flowery  creeks. 
And  tracks  thee  dancing  down  thy  water-breaks  ; 
If  wish  were  mine  some  type  of  thee  to  view, 
Thee,  and  not  thee  thyself,  I  would  not  do 
Like  Grecian  Artists,  give  thee  human  cheeks, 
Channels  for  tears  ;  no  Naiad  should'st  thou  be, — 
Have  neither  limbs,  feet,  feathers,  joints  nor  hairs  : 
It  seems  the  Eternal  Soul  is  clothed  in  thee 
With  purer  robes  than  those  of  flesh  and  blood, 
And  hath  bestowed  on  thee  a  safer  good  ; 
Unwearied  joy,  and  life  without  its  cares. 


CXCVI 

If- 

COMPOSED  UPON  WESTMINSTER  BRIDGE, 

SEPTEMBER    3,    1802. 

'C'  ARTH  has  not  anything  to  show  more  fair  : 

Dull  would  he  be  of  soul  who  could  pass  by 
A  sight  so  touching  in  its  majesty  ; 
This  City  now  doth  like  a  garment  wear 
The  beauty  of  the  morning  ;  silent,  bare, 
Ships,  towers,  domes,  theatres,  and  temples  lie 
Open  unto  the  fields  and  to  the  sky  ; 
All  bright  and  glittering  in  the  smokeless  air. 
Never  did  sun  more  beautifully  steep 
In  his  first  splendour,  valley,  rock,  or  hill ; 
Ne'er  saw  I,  never  felt,  a  calm  so  deep  ! 
The  river  glideth  at  his  own  sweet  will : 
Dear  God  !  the  very  houses  seem  asleep  ; 
And  all  that  mighty  heart  is  lying  still  ! 


English  Satinets  loi 

CXCVII 
A  PARSONAGE  IN  OXFORDSHIRE. 

Vy  HERE  holy  ground  begins,  unhallowed  ends,      yi^^^^:^'^^^ 

Is  marked  by  no  distinguishable  line  ;  — ^ 

J  <->  '  1770 — 1050 

The  turf  unites,  the  pathways  intertwine  ; 
And,  wheresoe'er  the  stealing  footstep  tends, 
Garden,  and  that  Domain  where  kindred,  friends,  ^ 

And  neighbours  rest  together,  here  confound 
Their  several  features,  mingled  like  the  sound 
Of  many  waters,  or  as  evening  blends 
With  shady  night.     Soft  airs  from  shrub  and  flower 
Waft  fragrant  greetings  to  each  silent  grave  ; 
And  while  those  lofty  poplars  gently  wave 
Their  tops,  between  them  comes  and  goes  a  sky- 
Bright  as  the  glimpses  of  eternity 
To  saints  accorded  in  their  mortal  hour. 


CXCVIII 
TO  LAD  Y  FITZGERALD, 

IN    HER    SEVENTIETH    YEAR. 

OUCH  age  how  beautiful  !  O  Lady  bright, 

^     Whose  mortal  lineaments  seem  all  refined 

By  favouring  Nature  and  a  saintly  Mind 

To  something  purer  and  more  exquisite 

Than  flesh  and  blood;  whene'er  thou  meet'st  my  sight. 

When  I  behold  thy  blanched  unwithered  cheek, 

Thy  temples  fringed  with  locks  of  gleaming  white. 

And  head  that  droops  because  the  soul  is  meek. 

Thee  with  the  welcome  Snowdrop  I  compare  ; 

That  child  of  winter,  prompting  thoughts  that  climb 

From  desolation  toward  the  genial  prime  ; 

Or  with  the  Moon  conquering  earth's  misty  air, 

And  filling  more  and  more  with  crystal  light 

As  pensive  Evening  deepens  into  night. 


102  A  Treasury  of 

cxcix 

William        ^  1  TH Y  art  thou  silent  !     Is  thy  love  a  plant 

Wordsworth         V  V 

— „  Of  such  weak  fibre  that  the  treacherous  air 

1770 — 1850 

Of  absence  withers  what  was  once  so  fair  ? 

Is  there  no  debt  to  pay,  no  boon  to  grant  ? 

Yet  have  my  thoughts  for  thee  been  vigilant — 

Bound  to  thy  service  with  unceasing  care, 

The  mind's  least  generous  wish  a  mendicant 

For  nought  but  what  thy  happiness  could  spare. 

Speak! — though  this  soft  warm  heart,once  free  to  hold 

A  thousand  tender  pleasures,  thine  and  mine, 

Be  left  more  desolate,  more  dreary  cold 

Than  a  forsaken  bird's-nest  filled  with  snow 

'Mid  its  own  bush  of  leafless  eglantine — 

Speak,  that  my  torturing  doubts  their  end  may  know  ! 


cc 

COMPOSED  ON  A  MA  V  MORNING,  1838. 

T   IFE  with  yon  Lambs,  like  day,  is  just  begun, 
^    Yet  Nature  seems  to  them  a  heavenly  guide. 
Does  joy  approach  ?  they  meet  the  coming  tide  ; 
And  sullenness  avoid,  as  now  they  shun 
Pale  twilight's  lingering  glooms, — and  in  the  sun 
Couch  near  their  dams,  with  quiet  satisfied  ; 
Or  gambol — each  with  his  shadow  at  his  side. 
Varying  its  shape  wherever  he  may  run. 
As  they  from  turf  yet  hoar  with  sleepy  dew 
All  turn,  and  court  the  shining  and  the  green. 
Where  herbs  look  up,  and  opening  flowers  are  seen  • 
Why  to  God's  goodness  cannot  We  be  true, 
And  so.  His  gifts  and  promises  between. 
Feed  to  the  last  on  pleasures  ever  new  ? 


English  Son7iets  103 

cci 

LO  !  where  she  stands  fixed  in  a  saint-hke  trance,        William 
r\  111  T     1  11  Wordsworth 

One  upward  hand,  as  if  she  needed  rest  — 

From  rapture,  lying  softly  on  her  breast  !  1770— i  50 

Nor  wants  her  eyeball  an  ethereal  glance  ; 

But  not  the  less — nay  more — that  countenance, 

While  thus  illumined,  tells  of  painful  strife 

For  a  sick  heart  made  weary  of  this  life 

By  love,  long  crossed  with  adverse  circumstance. — 

Would  She  were  now  as  when  she  hoped  to  pass 

At  God's  appointed  hour  to  them  who  tread 

Heaven's  sapphire  pavement,  yet  breathed  well  content. 

Well  pleased  her  foot  should  print  earth's  common  grass, 

Lived  thankful  for  day's  light,  for  daily  bread, 

For  health,  and  time  in  obvious  duty  spent. 


ecu  I 

Y^ANSFELL!  this  Household  has  a  favoured  lot. 

Living  with  liberty  on  thee  to  gaze,  : 

To  watch  while  Morn  first  crowns  thee  with  her  rays,  | 

Or  when  along  thy  breast  serenely  float  ; 

Evening's  angelic  clouds.     Yet  ne'er  a  note  .; 

Hath  sounded  (shame  upon  the  Bard  !)  thy  praise  \ 

For  all  that  thou,  as  if  from  heaven,  hast  brought  < 

Of  glory  lavished  on  our  quiet  days.  ] 

Bountiful  Son  of  Earth  !  when  we  are  gone  i 

From  every  object  dear  to  mortal  sight,  .  i 

As  soon  we  shall  be,  may  these  words  attest  \ 

How  oft,  to  elevate  our  spirits,  shone  '  i 

Thy  visionary  majesties  of  light,  ; 

How  in  thy  pensive  glooms  our  hearts  found  rest.  ■ 


I04 


A   Treasury  of 


William 
Wordsworth 

1770^1850 


CCIII 
COMPOSED  A  T  NEIDPA  TH  CASTLE. 
■p\EGENERATE    Douglas  !    oh,    the   unworthy 
^  "     Lord  ! 

Whom  mere  despite  of  heart  could  so  far  please, 
And  love  of  havoc,  (for  with  such  disease 
Fame  taxes  him,)  that  he  could  send  forth  word 
To  level  with  the  dust  a  noble  horde, 
A  brotherhood  of  venerable  Trees, 
Leaving  an  ancient  dome,   and  towers  like  these. 
Beggared  and  outraged  ! — Many  hearts  deplored 
The  fate  of  those  old  Trees  ;  and  oft  with  pain 
The  traveller,  at  this  day,  will  stop  and  gaze 
On  wrongs,  which  Nature  scarcely  seems  to  heed  : 
For  sheltered  places,  bosoms,  nooks,  and  bays, 
And  the  pure  mountains,  and  the  gentle  Tweed, 
And  the  green  silent  pastures,  yet  remain. 


cciv 
COMPOSED  BY  THE  SEA-SIDE,  NEAR  CALAIS. 

AUGUST,   1802. 

TJ'AIR  Star  of  evening.  Splendour  of  the  west. 

Star  of  my  Country  ! — on  the  horizon's  brink 
Thou  hangest,  stooping,  as  might  seem,  to  sink 
On  England's  bosom  ;  yet  well  pleased  to  rest 
Meanwhile,  and  be  to  her  a  glorious  crest 
Conspicuous  to  the  Nations.     Thou,  I  think, 
Should'st  be  my  Country's  emblem  ;   and  should'st 

wink. 
Bright  Star  !  with  laughter  on  her  banners,  drest 
In  thy  fresh  beauty.     There  !   that  dusky  spot 
Beneath  thee,  that  is  England  ;   there  she  lies. 
Blessings  be  on  you  both  !  one  hope,  one  lot, 
One  life,  one  glory  ! — I,  with  many  a  fear 
For  my  dear  Country,  many  heartfelt  sighs, 
Among  men  who  do  not  love  her,  linger  here. 


English  Sonnets  105 

ccv 
ON  THE  EXTINCTION  OF  THE 

VENETIAN    REPUBLIC. 

/^NCE  did  She  hold  the  gorgeous  east  in  fee,  wSworth 

^"^^     And  was  the  safeguard  of  the  west :  the  worth  — „ 

°  1770 — 1850 

Of  Venice  did  not  fall  below  her  birth, 

Venice,  the  eldest  Child  of  Liberty. 

She  was  a  maiden  City,  bright  and  free  ; 

No  guile  seduced,  no  force  could  violate  ; 

And  when  she  took  unto  herself  a  Mate, 

She  must  espouse  the  everlasting  Sea. 

And  what  if  she  had  seen  those  glories  fade. 

Those  titles  vanish,  and  that  strength  decay  ; 

Yet  shall  some  tribute  of  regret  be  paid  ; 

When  her  long  life  hath  reached  its  final  day  :  I 

Men  are  we,  and  must  grieve  when  even  the  Shade 

Of  that  which  once  was  great  is  passed  away. 

\ 

\ 

CCVI  •  \ 

TO  TOUSSAINT  L'OUVERTURE.  j 

'  I  "OUSSAINT,  the  most  unhappy  man  of  men  !  i 

Whether  the  whistling  Rustic  tend  his  plough  | 
Within  thy  hearing,  or  thy  head  be  now 

Pillowed  in  some  deep  dungeon's  earless  den  ; —  > 

O  miserable  Chieftain  !  where  and  when  i 

Wilt  thou  find  patience  ?     Yet  die  not  ;  do  thou  I 

Wear  rather  in  thy  bonds  a  cheerful  brow  :  \ 

Though  fallen  thyself,  never  to  rise  again,  : 

Live,  and  take  comfort.     Thou  hast  left  behind  .1 

Powers  that  will  work  for  thee  ;  air,  earth,  and  skies  ;  j 

There's  not  a  breathing  of  the  common  wind  1 

That  will  forget  thee  ;  thou  hast  great  allies  ;     '  j 

Thy  friends  are  exultations,  agonies,  ■ 
And  love,  and  man's  unconquerable  mind. 


io6  A  Treasury  of 

CCVII 
SEPTEMBER,  1802.      NEAR  DOVER. 
William         INLAND,  within  a  hollow  vale,  I  stood  ; 

Wordsworth        I  '  '  ' 

—  And  saw,  while  sea  was  calm  and  air  was  clear, 


1770 — 1850 


The  coast  of  France — the  coast  of  France  how  near  ! 
Drawn  almost  into  frightful  neighbourhood. 
I  shrunk  ;  for  verily  the  barrier  flood 
Was  like  a  lake,  or  river  bright  and  fair, 
A  span  of  waters  ;  yet  what  power  is  there  ! 
What  mightiness  for  evil  and  for  good  ! 
Even  so  doth  God  protect  us  if  we  be 
Virtuous  and  wise.     Winds  blow,  and  waters  roll, 
Strength  to  the  brave,  and  Power,  and  Deity  ; 
Yet  in  themselves  are  nothing  !     One  decree 
Spake  laws  to  them,  and  said  that  by  the  soul 
Only,  the  Nations  shall  be  great  and  free. 


CCVIII  : 
THOUGHT    OF   A     BRITON 

ON   THE  SUBJUGATION    OF   SWITZERLAND. 

''  I  "WO  Voices  are  there  ;  one  is  of  the  Sea,  I 

One  of  the  Mountains  ;  each  a  mighty  Voice  ;  i 
In  both  from  age  to  age  thou  didst  rejoice, 

They  were  thy  chosen  music.  Liberty  !  : 

There  came  a  Tyrant,  and  with  holy  glee  ■ 

Thou  fought'st  against  him  ;  but  hast  vainly  striven  :  ; 

Thou  from  thy  Alpine  holds  at  length  art  driven  \ 
Where  not  a  torrent  murmurs  heard  by  thee. 

Of  one  deep  bliss  thine  ear  hath  been  bereft  :  ; 

Then  cleave,  O  cleave  to  that  which  still  is  left ;  i 

For,  high-souled  Maid,  what  sorrow  would  it  be  ■ 

That  Mountain  floods  should  thunder  as  before,  ] 
And  Ocean  bellow  from  his  rocky  shore,                                    .  ] 

And  neither  awful  Voice  be  heard  by  thee  !  | 

i 


o 


English  Somiets  107 

CCIX 
WRITTEN  IN  LONDON,  SEPTEMBER,  1802. 
FRIEND  !  I  know  not  which  way  I  must  look     wokdsworth 


For  comfort,  being,  as  I  am,  opprest,  ^   ^^-g  ^ 

To  think  that  now  our  life  is  only  drest 
For  show  ;  mean  handiwork  of  craftsman,  cook, 
Or  groom  ! — We  must  run  glittering  like  a  brook 
In  the  open  sunshine,  or  we  are  unblest : 
The  wealthiest  man  among  us  is  the  best  : 
No  grandeur  now  in  nature  or  in  book 
Delights  us.     Rapine,  avarice,  expense. 
This  is  idolatry  ;  and  these  we  adore  : 
Plain  living  and  high  thinking  are  no  more  •. 
The  homely  beauty  of  the  good  old  cause 
Is  gone  ;  our  peace,  our  fearful  innocence. 
And  pure  religion  breathing  household  laws. 


ccx 

LONDON,  1802^ 

IV/riLTON  !  thou  should'st  be  living  at  this  hour 

England  hath  need  of  thee  :  she  is  a  fen 
Of  stagnant  waters  :  altar,  sword,  and  pen, 
Fireside,  the  heroic  wealth  of  hall  and  bower, 
Have  forfeited  their  ancient  English  dower 
Of  inward  happiness.     We  are  selfish  men  ; 
Oh  !  raise  us  up,  return  to  us  again  ; 
And  give  us  manners,  virtue,  freedom,  power. 
Thy  soul  was  like  a  Star,  and  dwelt  apart : 
Thou  hadst  a  voice  whose  sound  was  like  the  sea : 
Pure  as  the  naked  heavens,  majestic,  free, 
So  didst  thou  travel  on  life's  common  way. 
In  cheerful  godliness  ;  and  yet  thy  heart 
The  lowliest  duties  on  herself  did  lay. 


I770 — 1850 


io8  A  Treasury  of 

CCXI 

William        JT  is  not  to  be  thought  of  that  the  Flood 

Wordsworth       I 

Of  British  freedom,  which,  to  the  open  sea 
Of  the  world's  praise,  from  dark  antiquity 
Hath  flowed,  '  with  pomp  of  waters,  unwithstood,' 
Roused  though  it  be  full  often  to  a  mood 
Which  spurns  the  check  of  salutary  bands. 
That  this  most  famous  Stream  in  bogs  and  sands 
Should  perish  ;  and  to  evil  and  to  good 
Be  lost  for  ever.     In  our  halls  is  hung 
Armoury  of  the  invincible  Knights  of  old  : 
"VVe  must  be  free  or  die,  who  speak  the  tongue 
That  Shakspeare  spake  ;  the  faith  and  morals  hold 
Which  Milton  held. — In  every  thing  we  are  sprung 


Of  Earth's  first  blood,  have  titles  manifold.  \ 


CCXII 

I 

j 

"^  7^  THEN  I  have  borne  in  memory  what  has  tamed  « 

Great  Nations,  how  ennobling  thoughts  depart 

When  men  change  swords  for  ledgers,  and  desert  | 

The  student's  bower  for  gold,  some  fears  unnamed  | 

I  had,  my  Country  ! — am  I  to  be  blamed  ? 

Now,  when  I  think  of  thee,  and  what  thou  art, 

Verily,  in  the  bottom  of  my  heart,  j 

Of  those  unfilial  fears  I  am  ashamed.  : 

For  dearly  must  v/e  prize  thee  ;  we  who  find  j 

In  thee  a  bulwark  for  the  cause  of  men  ;  j 

And  I  by  my  affection  was  beguiled  :  j 

What  wonder  if  a  Poet  now  and  then. 

Among  the  many  movements  of  his  mind, 

Felt  for  thee  as  a  lover  or  a  child  !  ; 


English  Sonnets 


CCXXIII 

NOVEMBER,  1806. 


109 


A  NOTHER  year  !— another  deadly  blow  ! 
Another  mighty  Empire  overthrown  ! 
And  We  are  left,  or  shall  be  left,  alone  ; 
The  last  that  dare  to  struggle  with  the  Foe. 
'Tis  well !  from  this  day  forward  we  shall  know 
That  in  ourselves  our  safety  must  be  sought ; 
That  by  our  own  right  hands  it  must  be  wrought ; 
That  we  must  stand  unpropped,  or  be  laid  low. 
O  dastard  whom  such  foretaste  doth  not  cheer  ! 
We  shall  exult,  if  they  who  rule  the  land 
Be  men  who  hold  its  many  blessings  dear, 
Wise,  upright,  valiant  ;  not  a  servile  band, 
Who  are  to  judge  of  danger  which  they  fear. 
And  honour  which  they  do  not  understand. 


William 
Wordsworth 

1770 — 1850 


CCXIV 

T)  RAVE  Schill  !  by  death  delivered,  take  thy  flight 

From  Prussia's  timid  region.     Go,  and  rest 
With  heroes,  'mid  the  islands  of  the  Blest, 
Or  in  the  fields  of  empyrean  light. 
A  meteor  wert  thou  crossing  a  dark  night : 
Yet  shall  thy  name,  conspicuous  and  sublime, 
Stand  in  the  spacious  firmament  of  time. 
Fixed  as  a  star  :  such  glory  is  thy  right. 
Alas  !  it  may  not  be  :  for  earthly  fame 
Is  Fortune's  frail  dependent ;  yet  there  lives 
A  Judge,  who,  as  man  claims  by  merit,  gives  ; 
To  whose  all-pondering  mind  a  noble  aim, 
Faithfully  kept,  is  as  a  noble  deed  ; 
In  whose  pure  sight  all  virtue  doth  succeed. 


1 

Wordsworth       Jj ^ 


1770 — 1850 


no  A  Treasury  of 

CCXV 
SKY-PROSPECT 

FROM  THE  PLAIN  OF  FRANCE. 

William        "f    O  !  in  the  burning  west,  the  craggy  nape 
Of  a  proud  Ararat  !   and,  thereupon, 
The  Ark,  her  melancholy  voyage  done  ! 
Yon  rampant  cloud  mimics  a  lion's  shape  ; 
There,  combats  a  huge  crocodile — agape 
A  golden  spear  to  swallow  !  and  that  brown 
And  massy  grove,  so  near  yon  blazing  town, 
Stirs  and  recedes — destruction  to  escape  ! 
Yet  all  is  harmless — as  the  Elysian  shades 
Where  Spirits  dwell  in  undisturbed  repose — 
Silently  disappears,  or  quickly  fades  : 
Meek  Nature's  evening  comment  on  the  shows 
That  for  oblivion  take  their  daily  birth 
From  all  the  fuming  vanities  of  Earth  ! 


ccxvi 

■jVTEAR  Anio's  stream,  I  spied  a  gentle  Dove, 

^  ^      Perched  on  an   olive  branch,  and  heard  her  ; 

cooing                                                .  j 
'Mid  new-born  blossoms  that  soft  airs  were  wooing, 

While  all  things  present  told  of  joy  and  love,  ] 

But  restless  Fancy  left  that  olive  grove  \ 

To  hail  the  exploratory  Bird  renewing  ^i 

Hope  for  the  few,  who,  at  the  world's  undoing,  | 

On  the  great  flood  were  spared  to  live  and  move.  \ 

O  bounteous  Heaven  !  signs  true  as  dove  and  bough  j 

Brought  to  the  Ark  are  coming  evermore,  j 

Given  though  we  seek  them  not,  but,  while  we  plough  j 

This  sea  of  life  without  a  visible  shore,  i 

Do  neither  promise  ask  nor  grace  implore  j 

In  what  alone  is  ours,  the  living  Now.  ' 


English  Sonnets  iii 

CCXVII 
THE  RIVER  DUDDON. 


CHILD  of  the  clouds  \  remote  from  every  taint  Wiluam 

Of  sordid  industry  thy  lot  is  cast ; 


Thine  are  the  honours  of  the  lofty  waste  ; 

Not  seldom,  when  with  heat  the  valleys  faint, 

Thy  handmaid  Frost  with  spangled  tissue  quaint 

Thy  cradle  decks  ; — to  chant  thy  birth  thou  hast 

No  meaner  Poet  than  the  whistling  Blast, 

And  Desolation  is  thy  Patron-saint  ! 

She  guards  thee,  ruthless  Power!  who  would  not  spare 

Those  mighty  forests,  once  the  bison's  screen, 

Where  stalked  the  huge  deer  to  his  shaggy  lair 

Through  paths  and  alleys  roofed  with  darkest  green, 

Thousands  of  years  before  the  silent  air 

Was  pierced  by  whizzing  shaft  of  hunter  keen  ! 


CCXVIII 


O  OLE  listener,  Duddon  !  to  the  breeze  that  played 
With  thy  clear  voice,  I  caught  the  fitful  sound 
Wafted  o'er  sullen  moss  and  craggy  mound — 
Unfruitful  solitudes,  that  seemed  to  upbraid 
The  sun  in  heaven  ! — but  now,  to  form  a  shade 
For  Thee,  green  alders  have  together  wound 
Their  foliage  ;  ashes  flung  their  arms  around  ; 
And  birch-trees  risen  in  silver  colonnade. 
And  thou  hast  also  tempted  here  to  rise, 
'Mid  sheltering  pines,  this  Cottage  rude  and  grey  ; 
Whose  ruddy  children,  by  the  mother's  eyes 
Carelessly  watched,  sport  through  the  summer  day, 
Thy  pleased  associates  : — light  as  endless  May 
On  infant  bosoms  lonely  Nature  lies. 


Wordsworth 
1770 — 1850 


112  A  Treasury  of 

ccxix 
THE  RIVER  DUDDON. 

3 
FLOWERS. 

Wordsworth      TT-^^  ^^^  *-*"'*  coursc  was  graced  with  social  trees 


1770 — 1850 


■^     It  lacked  not  old  remains  of  hawthorn  bowers, 
Where  small  birds  warble  to  their  paramours  ; 
And,  earlier  still,  was  heard  the  hum  of  bees  ; 
I  saw  them  ply  their  harmless  robberies, 
And  caught  the  fragrance  which  the  sundry  flowers, 
Fed  by  the  stream  with  soft  perpetual  showers, 
Plenteously  yielded  to  the  vagrant  breeze. 
There  bloomed  the  strawberry  of  the  wilderness  ; 
The  trembling  eyebright  showed  her  sapphire  blue, 
The  thyme  her  purple,  like  the  blush  of  Even  ; 
And  if  the  breath  of  some  to  no  caress 
Invited,  forth  they  peeped  so  fair  to  view. 
All  kinds  alike  seemed  favourites  of  Heaven. 

ccxx 
4 
■\  ^  THAT  aspect  bore  the  Man  who  roved  or  fled. 
First  of  his  tribe,  to  this  dark  dell — who  first 
In  this  pellucid  Current  slaked  his  thirst  ? 
What  hopes  came  with  him?  what  designs  were  spread 
Along  his  path  ?     His  unprotected  bed 
What  dreams  encompassed?  Was  the  intruder  nursed 
In  hideous  usages,  and  rites  accursed, 
That  thinned  the  living  and  disturbed  the  dead  ? 
No  voice  replies  ; — both  air  and  earth  are  mute  ; 
And  Thou,  blue   Streamlet,  murmuring  yield'st  no 

more 
Than  a  soft  record,  that,  whatever  fruit 
Of  ignorance  thou  might'st  witness  heretofore. 
Thy  function  was  to  heal  and  to  restore, 
To  soothe  and  cleanse,  not  madden  and  pollute  ! 


o 


English  Sojinets  113 

ccxxi 


MOUNTAIN  Stream !  the  Shepherd  and  his  Cot    „  w.lliam 

^  Wordsworth 


Are  privileged  Inmates  of  deep  solitude  ; 
Nor  would  the  nicest  Anchorite  exclude 
A  field  or  two  of  brighter  green,  or  plot 
Of  tillage-ground,  that  seemeth  like  a  spot 
Of  stationary  sunshine  : — thou  hast  viewed 
These  only,  Duddon  !  with  their  paths  renewed 
By  fits  and  starts,  yet  this  contents  thee  not. 
Thee  hath  some  awful  Spirit  impelled  to  leave, 
Utterly  to  desert,  the  haunts  of  men. 
Though  simple  thy  companions  were  and  few  ; 
And  through  this  wilderness  a  passage  cleave, 
Attended  but  by  thy  own  voice,  save  when 
The  clouds  and  fowls  of  the  air  thy  way  pursue  ! 


ccxxri 

6 
SEATHWAITE   CHAPEL. 

O  ACRED  Religion  !  '  mother  of  form  and  fear/ 

Dread  arbitress  of  mutable  respect, 
New  rites  ordaining  when  the  old  are  wrecked, 
Or  cease  to  please  the  fickle  worshipper ; 
Mother  of  Love  !  (that  name  best  suits  thee  here) 
Mother  of  Love  !  for  this  deep  vale,  protect 
Truth's  holy  lamp,  pure  source  of  bright  effect, 
Gifted  to  purge  the  vapoury  atmosphere 
That  seeks  to  stifle  it  ; — as  in  those  days 
When  this  low  Pile  a  Gospel  Teacher  knew, 
Whose  good  works  formed  an  endless  retinue  : 
A  Pastor  such  as  Chaucer's  verse  pourtrays. 
Such  as  the  heaven-taught  skill  of  Herbert  drew  ; 
And  tender  Goldsmith  crowned  with  deathless  praise  ! 


114  A  Treasury  of 

CCXXIII 
THE    RIVER    DUD  DON. 

7 
AFTER-THOUGHT. 

T  THOUGHT  of  Thee,  my  partner  and  my  guide, 
As  being  past  away. — Vain  sympathies  ! 

For  backward,  Duddon  !  as  I  cast  my  eyes, 

I  see  what  was,  and  is,  and  will  abide  ; 

Still  glides  the  Stream,  and  shall  for  ever  glide  ; 

The  Form  remains,  the  Function  never  dies  ; 

While  we,  the  brave,  the  mighty,  and  the  wise, 

We  Men,  who  in  our  morn  of  youth  defied 

The  elements,  must  vanish  ; — be  it  so  ! 

Enough,  if  something  from  our  hands  have  power 

To  live,  and  act,  and  serve  the  future  hour  ; 

And  if,  as  toward  the  silent  tomb  we  go. 

Through  love,  through  hope,  and  faith's  transcend- 
ent dower, 

We  feel  that  we  are  greater  than  we  know. 


ccxxiv 


ON  THE  DEPARTURE  OF  SIR  WALTER  SCOTT 


FROM    ABBOTSFORD,    FOR    NAPLES. 


A 


TROUBLE,  not  of  clouds,  or  weeping  rain, 
Nor  of  the  setting  sun's  pathetic  light 
Engendered,  hangs  o'er  Eildon's  triple  height  : 
Spirits  of  Power,  assembled  there,  complain 
For  kindred  Power  departing  from  their  sight  ; 
While  Tweed,  best  pleased  in  chanting  a  blithe  strain. 
Saddens  his  voice  again,  and  yet  again. 
Lift  up  your  hearts,  ye  Mourners  !  for  the  might 
Of  the  whole  world's  good  wishes  with  him  goes  ; 
Blessings  and  prayers,  in  nobler  retinue 
Than  sceptered  king  or  laurelled  conqueror  knows. 
Follow  this  wondrous  Potentate.     Be  true. 
Ye  winds  of  ocean,  and  the  midland  sea, 
Wafting  your  Charge  to  soft  Parthenope  ! 


\ 


T 


English  Sonnets  115 

ccxxv 
THE    TROSSACHS. 
HERE'S  not  a  nook  within  this  solemn  Pass,         w}:^"'"^o. 


But  were  an  apt  confessional  for  One 
Taught  by  his  summer  spent,  his  autumn  gone, 
That  life  is  but  a  tale  of  morning  grass 
Withered  at  eve.     From  scenes  of  art  which  chase 
That  thought  away,  turn,  and  with  watchful  eyes 
Feed  it  'midst  Nature's  old  felicities. 
Rocks,  rivers,  and  smooth  lakes  more  clear  than  glass 
Untouched,  unbreathed  upon.    Thrice  happy  quest, 
If  from  a  golden  perch  of  aspen  spray 
(October's  workmanshij)  to  rival  May) 
The  pensive  warbler  of  the  ruddy  breast 
That  moral  sweeten  by  a  heaven-taught  lay, 
Lulling  the  year,  with  all  its  cares,  to  rest ! 

ccxxvi 

ROMAN  ANTIQUITIES. 

(from   the   ROMAN    STATION  AT   OLD   PENRITH.) 

T  TOW  profitless  the  relics  that  we  cull. 

Troubling  the  last  holds  of  ambitious  Rome, 
Unless  they  chasten  fancies  that  presume 
Too  high,  or  idle  agitations  lull ! 
Of  the  world's  flatteries  if  the  brain  be  full. 
To  have  no  seat  for  thought  were  better  doom 
Like  this  old  helmet,  or  the  eyeless  skull 
Of  him  who  gloried  in  its  nodding  plume. 
Heaven  out  of  view,  our  wishes  what  are  they 
Our  fond  regrets  tenacious  in  their  grasp  ? 
The  Sage's  theory  ?  the  Poet's  lay  ? — 
Mere  Fibulae  without  a  robe  to  clasp  ; 
Obsolete  lamps,  whose  hght  no  time  recalls  ; 
Urns  without  ashes,  tearless  lacrymals  ! 


Wordsworth 
1770 — 1850 


ii6  A  Treasury  of 


CCXXVII  I 

I 


DISSOLUTION  OF  THE  MONASTERIES. 
William         T^HRE  ATS  come  which  no  submission  may  assuage, 


Wordsworth 
1770— 1850 


No  sacrifice  avert,  no  power  dispute  ;  ■ 

The  tapers  shall  be  quenched,  the  belfries  mute. 
And,  'mid  their  choirs  unroofed  by  selfish  rage. 
The  warbling  wren  shall  find  a  leafy  cage  ; 
The  gadding  bramble  hang  her  purple  fruit ; 
And  the  green  lizard  and  the  gilded  newt 
Lead  unmolested  lives,  and  die  of  age. 
The  owl  of  evening  and  the  woodland  fox 
For  their  abode  the  shrines  of  Waltham  choose : 
Proud  Glastonbury  can  no  more  refuse 
To  stoop  her  head  before  these  desperate  shocks — 
She  whose  high  pomp  displaced,  as  story  tells, 
Arimathean  Joseph's  wattled  cells. 


CCXXVIII 

THE     VIRGIN. 

IV /T  OTHER  !  whose  virgin  bosom  was  uncrost 

With  the  least  shade  of  thought  to  sin  allied  ; 
Woman  !  above  all  women  glorified, 
Our  tainted  nature's  solitary  boast ; 
Purer  than  foam  on  central  ocean  tost ; 
Brighter  than  eastern  skies  at  daybreak  strewn 
Witii  fancied  roses,  than  the  unblemished  moon 
Before  her  wane  begins  on  heaven's  blue  coast ; 
Thy  Image  falls  to  earth.     Yet  some,  I  ween, 
Not  unforgiven  the  suppliant  knee  might  bend^ 
As  to  a  visible  Power,  in  which  did  blend 
All  that  was  mixed  and  reconciled  in  Thee 
Of  mother's  love  with  maiden  purity, 
Of  high  with  low,  celestial  with  terrene ! 


English  Sonnets  117 

CCXXIX 
WALTON'S  BOOK  OF  LIVES. 

'y  HERE  are  no  colours  in  the  fairest  sky  ■  woIdswortk 

^       So  fair  as  these.     The  feather,  whence  the  pen       ,^^^850 
Was  shaped  that  traced  the  Hves  of  these  good  men, 
Dropped  from  an  Angel's  wing.     With  moistened  eye 
We  read  of  faith  and  purest  charity 
In  Statesman,  Priest,  and  humble  Citizen  : 
O  could  we  copy  their  mild  virtues,  then 
What  joy  to  live,  what  blessedness  to  die  ! 
Methinks  their  very  names  shine  still  and  bright ; 
Apart — like  glow-worms  on  a  summer  night ; 
Or  lonely  tapers  when  from  far  they  fling 
A  guiding  ray  ;  or  seen — like  stars  on  high, 
Satellites  burning  in  a  lucid  ring 
Around  meek  Walton's  heavenly  memory. 


ccxxx 

MUTABILITY. 

"PROM  low  to  high  doth  dissolution  climb, 

And  sink  from  high  to  low,  along  a  scale 
Of  awful  notes,  whose  concord  shall  not  fail ; 
A  musical  but  melancholy  chime. 
Which  they  can  hear  who  meddle  not  with  crime, 
Nor  avarice,  nor  over- anxious  care. 
Truth  fails  not ;  but  her  outward  forms  that  bear 
The  longest  date  do  melt  like  frosty  rime. 
That  in  the  morning  whitened  hill  and  plain 
And  is  no  more  ;  drop  like  the  tower  sublime 
Of  yesterday,  which  royally  did  wear 
His  crown  of  weeds,  biit  could  not  even  sustain 
Some  casual  shout  that  broke  the  silent  air. 
Or  the  unimaginable  touch  of  Time. 


ii8 


A  Treasury  of 


ccxxxi 


William 
Wordsworth 

1770—1850 


INSIDE   OF  KING'S  COILEGE   CHAPEL, 


CAMBRIDGE. 


'T'AX  not  the  royal  Saint  with  vain  expense, 

With  ill-matched  aims  the  Architect  who  planned, 
Albeit  labouring  for  a  scanty  band 
Of  white-robed  Scholars  only — this  immense 
And  glorious  Work  of  fine  intelligence  ! 
Give  all  thou  canst ;  high  Heaven  rejects  the  lore 
Of  nicely-calculated  less  or  more  ; 
So  deemed  the  man  who  fashioned  for  the  sense 
These  lofty  pillars,  spread  that  branching  roof 
Self-poised,  and  scooped  into  ten  thousand  cells. 
Where  light  and  shade  repose,  where  music  dwells 
Lingering — and  wandering  on  as  loth  to  die  ; 
Like  thoughts  whose  very  sweetness  yieldeth  proof 
That  they  were  born  for  immortality. 


ccxxxii 
MARY  QUEEN  OF  SCOTS. 

(landing  at  the   mouth    of   the   DERWENT,    WORKINGTON.) 

T^EAR  to  the  Loves,  and  to  the  Graces  vowed. 

The  Queen  drew  back  the  wimple  that  she  wore  ; 
And  to  the  throng,  that  on  the  Cumbrian  shore 
Her  landing  hailed,  how  touchingly  she  bowed  ! 
And  like  a  Star  (that,  from  a  heavy  cloud 
Of  pine-tree  foliage  poised  in  air,  forth  darts, 
When  a  soft  summer  gale  at  evening  parts 
The  gloom  that  did  its  loveliness  enshroud) 
She  smiled  ;  but  Time,  the  old  Saturnian  seer, 
Sighed  on  the  wing  as  her  foot  pressed  the  strand, 
With  step  prelusive  to  a  long  array 
Of  woes  and  degradations  hand  in  hand — 
Weeping  captivity,  and  shuddering  fear 
Stilled  by  the  ensanguined  block  of  Fotheringay  ! 


English  Sonnets  119 


CCXXXIII 
CA  VE  OF  STAFFA. 


•T^HANKS  for  the  lessons  of  this  Spot— fit  school     wordswor- 


For   the   presumptuous   thoughts   that  would 


Wordsworth 
1770 — 1S50 


assign 


Mechanic  laws  to  agency  divine  ; 
And,  measuring  heaven  by  earth,  would  overrule 
Infinite  Power.     The  pillared  vestibule, 
Expanding  yet  precise,  the  roof  embowed, 
Might  seem  designed  to  humble  man,  when  proud 
Of  his  best  workmanship  by  plan  and  tool. 
Down-bearing  with  his  whole  Atlantic  weight 
Of  tide  and  tempest  on  the  Structure's  base, 
And  flashing  to  that  Structure's  topmost  height, 
Ocean  has  proved  its  strength,  and  of  its  grace 
In  calms  is  conscious,  finding  for  his  freight 
Of  softest  music  some  responsive  place. 

ccxxxiv 
FLOWERS  ON   THE    TOP   OF   THE  PILLARS 

AT  THE  ENTRANCE  OF  THE  CAVE. 

TT OPE  smiled  when  your  nativity  was  cast. 

Children  of  Summer  !     Ye  fresh  Flowers  that  brave 
What  Summer  here  escapes  not,  the  fierce  wave, 
And  whole  artillery  of  the  western  blast,  J 

Battering  the  Temple's  front,  its  long-drawn  nave  j 

Smiting,  as  if  each  moment  were  their  last.  ! 

But  ye,  bright  Flowers,  on  frieze  and  architrave 
Survive,  and  once  again  the  Pile  stands  fast :  i 

Calm  as  the  Universe,  from  specular  towers 

Of  heaven  contemplated  by  Spirits  pure  j 

With  mute  astonishment,  it  stands  sustained 

Through  every  part  in  symmetry,  to  endure,  i 

Unhurt,  the  assault  of  Time  with  all  his  hours, 
As  the  supreme  Artificer  ordained. 


William 
Wordsworth 

1770 — 1850 


120  A  Treasury  of 

ccxxxv 

IV /TOST  sweet  it  is  with  unuplifted  eyes 

To  pace  the  ground,  if  path  be  there  or  none, 
While  a  fair  region  round  the  traveller  lies 
Which  he  forbears  again  to  look  upon  : 
Pleased  rather  with  some  soft  ideal  scene, 
The  work  of  Fancy,  or  some  happy  tone 
Of  meditation,  slipping  in  between 
The  beauty  coming  and  the  beauty  gone. 
If  Thought  and  Love  desert  us,  from  that  day 
Let  us  break  off  all  commerce  with  the  Muse  : 
With  Thought  and  Love  companions  of  our  way, 
Whate'er  the  senses  take  or  may  refuse, 
The  Mind's  internal  heaven  shall  shed  her  dews 
Of  inspiration  on  the  humblest  lay. 


ccxxxvi 


TO    THE  AUTHOR  OF   "THE  ROBBERS." 


^ColIr?dgI''°''    C  CHILLER!  that  hour  I  would  have  wished  to  die, 
~g  If  through  the  shuddering  midnight  I  had  sent, 

From  the  dark  dungeon  of  the  tower  time-rent. 
That  fearful  voice,  a  famished  father's  cry  ; 
Lest  in  some  after  moment  aught  more  mean 
Might  stamp  me  mortal.     A  triumphant  shout 
Black  Horror  screamed,  and  all  her  goblin  rout 
Diminished  shrunk  from  the  more  withering  scene. 
Ah  !  bard  tremendous  in  sublimity  ! 
Could  I  behold  thee  in  thy  loftier  mood, 
Wandering  at  eve  with  finely  frenzied  eye 
Beneath  some  vast  old  tempest-swinging  wood. 
Awhile  with  mute  awe  gazing  I  would  brood, 
Then  weep  aloud  in  a  wild  ecstasy  ! 


English  Sonnets  I2i 

CCXXXVII 
TO    THE  RIVER    OTTER. 

DEAR  native  brook  !  Avild  streamlet  of  the  West!   Samuel  Taylor 
Coleridge 
How  many  various-fated  years  have  passed,  — 

1772 — 1834 

What  happy,  and  what  mournful  hours,  smce  last 

I  skimmed  the  smooth  thin  stone  along  thy  breast, 

Numbering  its  light  leaps  !     Yet  so  deep  imprest 

Sink  the  sweet  scenes  of  childhood,  that  ijiine  eyes 

I  never  shut  amid  the  sunny  ray. 

But  straight  with  all  their  tints  thy  waters  rise, 

Thy  crossing  plank,  thy  marge  with  willows  gray, 

And  bedded  sand  that,  veined  with  various  dyes. 

Gleamed  through  thy  bright  transparence.    On  my  way, 

Visions  of  childhood  !  oft  have  ye  beguiled 

Lone  manhood's  cares,  yet  waking  fondest  sighs  : 

Ah  !  that  once  more  I  were  a  careless  child. 


CCXXXVIII 
FANCY    IN    NUB  IB  US: 

OR   THE    POET    IN   TEIE   CLOUDS. 

/^  IT  is  pleasant,  with  a  heart  at  ease, 

^^'^     Just  after  sunset,  or  by  moonlight  skies. 

To  make  the  shifting  clouds  be  what  you  please,  ' 

Or  let  the  easily-persuaded  eyes  . 

Own  each  quaint  likeness  issuing  from  the  mould        '  j 

Of  a  friend's  fancy  :  or,  with  head  bent  low  j 

And  cheek  aslant,  see  rivers  flow  of  gold  j 

'Twixt  crimson  banks  ;  and  then,  a  traveller,  go  ' 

From  mount  to  mount  through  Cloudland,  gorgeous  land  ! 

Or  listening  to  the  tide,  with  closed  sight,  ' 

Be  that  blind  bard  who,  on  the  Chian  strand  \ 

By  those  deep  sounds  possessed  with  inward  light,  j 

Beheld  the  Iliad  and  the  Odyssee  1 

Rise  to  the  swelling  of  the  voiceful  sea.  j 


122 


A  Treasury  of 


Samuel  Taylor 
Coleridge 

1772— 1834 


CCXXXIX 


TO  NATURE. 


TT  may  indeed  be  phantasy  when  I 

Essay  to  draw  from  all  created  things 
Deep,  heartfelt,  inward  joy  that  closely  clings ; 
And  trace  in  leaves  and  flowers  that  round  me  lie 
Lessons  of  love  and  earnest  piety. 
So  let  it  be  ;  and  if  the  wide  world  rings 
In  mock  of  this  belief,  to  me  it  brings 
Nor  fear,  nor  grief,  nor  vain  perplexity. 
So  will  I  build  my  altar  in  the  fields, 
And  the  blue  sky  my  fretted  dome  shall  be, 
And  the  sweet  fragrance  that  the  wild  flower  yields 
Shall  be  the  incense  I  will  yield  to  Thee, 
Thee  only  God  !  and  Thou  shalt  not  despise 
Even  me,  the  priest  of  this  poor  sacrifice. 


Mary  Tighe 


1773—1010 


CCXL 
TO    TIME. 

A/ES,  gentle  Time,  thy  gradual,  healing  hand 

Hath  stolen  from  Sorrow's  grasp  the  enven- 
omed dart ; 
Submitting  to  thy  skill,  my  passive  heart 
Feels  that  no  grief  can  thy  soft  power  Avithstand  ; 
And  though  my  aching  breast  still  heaves  the  sigh, 
Though  oft  the  tear  swells  silent  in  mine  eye  ; 
Yet  the  keen  pang,  the  agony  is  gone  ; 
Sorrow  and  I  shall  part  ;  and  these  faint  throes 
Are  but  the  remnant  of  severer  woes  : 
As  when  the  furious  tempest  is  o'erblown, 
And  when  the  sky  has  wept  its  violence. 
The  opening  heavens  will  oft  let  fall  a  shower. 
The  poor  o'ercharged  boughs  still  drops  dispense, 
And  still  the  loaded  streams  in  torrents  pour. 


English  Sonnets  123 

CCXLI 

A  WRINKLED,  crabbed  man  they  picture  thee,  Robert 

_,,    ,    ,,..  .    ,  ,    -  ,  SOUTHEY 

Old  Winter,  with  a  rugged  beard  as  grey  — 

As  the  long  moss  upon  the  apple-tree  ;  '774—1  43 

Blue-lipt,  an  ice-drop  at  thy  sharp  blue  nose, 
Close  muffled  up,  and  on  thy  dreary  way 
Plodding  alone  through  sleet  and  drifting  snows. 
They  should  have  drawn  thee  by  the  high-heapt  hearth, 
Old  Winter  !  seated  in  thy  great  armed  chair, 
Watching  the  children  at  their  Christmas  mirth ; 
Or  circled  by  them  as  thy  lips  declare 
Some  merry  jest,  or  tale  of  murder  dire. 
Or  troubled  spirit  that  disturbs  the  night. 
Pausing  at  times  to  rouse  the  mouldering  fire, 
Or  taste  the  old  October  brown  and  bright. 


CCXLII 
TO  A  FRIEND. 

'P'RIEND  of  my  earliest  years  and  childish  days,      Charles  Lamb 

My  joys,  my  sorrows,  thou  with  me  hast  shared,       1775^834 
Companion  dear,  and  we  alike  have  fared 
(Poor  pilgrims  we)  through  life's  unequal  ways  ; 
It  were  unwisely  done,  should  we  refuse 
To  cheer  our  path  as  featly  as  we  may. 
Our  lonely  path  to  cheer,  as  travellers  use. 
With  merry  song,  quaint  tale,  or  roundelay  ; 
And  we  will  sometimes  talk  past  troubles  o'er, 
Of  mercies  shewn,  and  all  our  sickness  healed. 
And  in  his  judgments  God  remembering  love  ; 
And  we  will  learn  to  praise  God  evermore 
For  those  glad  tidings  of  great  joy  revealed 
By  that  sooth  Messenger  sent  from  above. 


124  A  Treasury  of 

CCXLIII 
WORK 


Charles  Lamb 


^"^  ^HO  first  invented  Work,  and  bound  the  free 
1775— 1834  And  holyday-rejoicing  spirit  down 

To  the  ever-haunting  importunity 
Of  business  in  the  green  fields,  and  the  town — 
To  plough,  loom,  anvil,  spade — and  oh  !  most  sad, 
To  that  dry  drudgery  at  the  desk's  dead  wood  ? 
Who  but  the  Being  unblest,  alien  from  good, 
Sabbathless  Satan  !  he  who  his  unglad 
Task  ever  plies  'mid  rotatory  burnings. 
That  round  and  round  incalculably  reel — 
For  wrath  divine  hath  made  him  like  a  wheel — 
In  that  red  realm  from  which  are  no  returnings  : 
Where  toiling,  and  turmoiling,  ever  and  aye 
He,  and  nis  thoughts,  keep  pensive  working-day. 

ccxLiy 

LEISURE. 

T^HEY  talk  of  Time,  and  of  Time's  galling  yoke. 

That  like  a  millstone  on  man's  mind  doth  press, 
Which  only  works  and  business  can  redress  ; 
Of  divine  Leisure  such  foul  lies  are  spoke. 
Wounding  her  fair  gifts  with  calumnious  stroke  ; 
But  might  I,  fed  with  silent  meditation, 
Assoiled  live  from  that  fiend  Occupation — 
Improbus  Labor,  which  my  spirits  hath  broke — 
I'd  drink  of  Time's  rich  cup,  and  never  surfeit  ; 
Fling  in  more  days  than  went  to  make  the  gem 
That  crowned  the  white  top  of  Methusalem  ; 
Yea  on  my  weak  neck  take,  and  never  forfeit, 
Like  Atlas  bearing  up  the  dainty  sky, 
The  heaven-sweet  burthen  of  eternity. 

^eiis  nobis  I^aft  otia  imt 


English  Sonnets  125 


CCXLV 


/^  LIFT  with  reverent  hand  that  tarnished  flower,    Charles  Lamb 

^■^    That  shrines  beneath  her  modest  canopy  1775— 1834 

Memorials  dear  to  Romish  piety  ; 

Dim  specks,  rude  shapes,  of  Saints  !   in  fervent  hour 

The  work  perchance  of  some  meek  devotee 

Who,  poor  in  worldly  treasures  to  set  forth 

The  sanctities  she  worshipped  to  their  worth, 

In  this  imperfect  tracery  might  see 

Hints,  that  all  Heaven  did  to  her  sense  reveal. 

Cheap  gifts  best  fit  poor  givers.     We  are  told 

Of  the  lone  mite,  the  cup  of  water  cold, 

That  in  their  way  approved  the  offerer's  zeal. 

True  love  shows  costliest  where  the  means  are  scant; 

And,  in  her  reckoning,  they  abound  who  want. 


CCXLVI 

NIGHT  AND  DBA  TH. 

MYSTERIOUS  Night!  when  our  first  parent  knew  Joseph  Blanco 
•    .                                                                   V/hite 
Thee  from  report  divme,  and  heard  thy  name,  

Did  he  not  tremble  for  this  lovely  frame,  1775— i  41 

This  glorious  canopy  of  light  and  blue  ? 

Yet  'neath  a  curtain  of  translucent  dew. 

Bathed  in  the  rays  of  the  great  setting  flame, 

Hesperus  with  the  host  of  heaven  came. 

And  lo  !  Creation  widened  in  man's  view. 

Who  could  have  thought  such  darkness  lay  concealed 

Within  thy  beams,  O  Sun  !  or  who  could  find. 

Whilst  fly  and  leaf  and  insect  stood  revealed, 

That  to  such  countless  orbs  thou  mad'st  us  blind  ! 

Why  do  we  then  shun  Death  with  anxious  strife  ? 

If  Light  can  thus  deceive,  wherefore  not  Life  ? 


126 


A   Tj-easury  of 


CCXLVII 


Horace  Smith 
1779— 1849 


Tip  TERN  AL  and  Omnipotent  Unseen  ! 
■^    Who  bad'st  the  world, with  all  its  lives  complete, 
Start  from  the  void  and  thrill  beneath  thy  feet, 
Thee  I  adore  with  reverence  serene  ; 
Here,  in  the  fields,  thine  own  cathedral  meet. 
Built  by  thyself,  star-roofed,  and  hung  with  green, 
Wherein  all  breathing  things  in  concord  sweet, 
Organed  by  winds,  perpetual  hymns  repeat. 
Here  hast  thou  spread  that  book  to  every  eye. 
Whose  tongue  and  truth  all,  all  may  read  and  prove. 
On  whose  three  blessed  leaves,  Earth,  Ocean,  Sky, 
Thine  own  righthand  hath  stampedmight,  justice,  love: 
Grand  Trinity,  which  binds  in  due  degree 
God,  man,  and  brute,  in  social  unity. 


CCXLVIII 


Lord  Thurlow   "IT  THEN  in  the  woods  I  wander  all  alone, 
1781— 1829         ^  The  woods  that  are  my  solace  and  delight, 

Which  I  more  covet  than  a  prince's  throne. 
My  toil  by  day  and  canopy  by  night ; 
(Light  heart,  light  foot,  light  food,  and  slumber  light. 
These  lights  shall  light  us  to  old  age's  gate. 
While  monarchs,  whom  rebellious  dreams  affright, 
Heavy  with  fear,  death's  fearful  summons  wait ;) 
Whilst  here  I  wander,  pleased  to  be  alone. 
Weighing  in  thought  the  world's  no-happiness, 
I  cannot  choose  but  wonder  at  its  moan. 
Since  so  plain  joys  the  woody  life  can  bless : 
Then  live  who  may  where  honied  words  prevail, 
I  with  the  deer,  and  with  the  nightingale  ! 


English  Sonnets  127 

CCXLIX 
THE   HARVEST  MOON. 

nPHE  crimson  Moon,  uprising  from  the  sea,  Lord  Thurlow 

With  large  dehght,  foretells  the  harvest  near  :         1781— 1829 
Ye  shepherds,  now  prepare  your  melody 
To  greet  the  soft  appearance  of  her  sphere  ; 
And,  like  a  page  enamoured  of  her  train. 
The  star  of  evening  glimmers  in  the  west : 
Then  raise,  ye  shepherds,  your  observant  strain, 
That  so  of  the  Great  Shepherd  here  are  blest. 
Our  fields  are  full  with  the  time-ripened  grain. 
Our  vineyards  with  the  purple  clusters  swell ; 
Her  golden  splendour  glimmers  on  the  main. 
And  vales  and  mountains  her  bright  glory  tell  : 
Then  sing,  ye  shepherds,  for  the  time  is  come 
When  we  must  bring  the  enriched  harvest  home. 


CCL 
TO  A    BIRD    THAT  HAUNTED    THE    WATERS 

OF   LAKEN,    IN   THE   WINTER. 

r\  MELANCHOLY  bird  !— a  winter's  day 
^^^     Thou  standest  by  the  margin  of  the  pool, 
And,  taught  by  God,  dost  thy  whole  being  school 
To  patience,  which  all  evil  can  allay  ; 
God  has  appointed  thee  the  fish  thy  prey  ; 
And  given  thyself  a  lesson  to  the  fool 
Unthrifty,  to  submit  to  moral  rule. 
And  his  unthinking  course  by  thee  to  weigh. 
There  need  not  schools,  nor  the  professor's  chair,   . 
Though  these  be  good,  true  wisdom  to  impart ; 
He  who  has  not  enough  for  these  to  spare 
Of  time  or  gold,  may  yet  amend  his  heart. 
And  teach  his  soul  by  brooks  and  rivers  fair  : 
Nature  is  always  wise  in  every  part. 


Ebenezer 
Elliott 

1781— 1849 


128  A  Treasury  of 

CCLI 
SPRING. 

i:BENEZER         A  GAIN  the  violet  of  our  early  days 

Elliott  i\ 

Drinks  beauteous  azure  from  the  golden  sun,- 
And  kindles  into  fragrance  at  his.  blaze  ; 
The  streams,  rejoiced  that  winter's  work  is  done, 
Talk  of  to-morrow's  cowslips  as  they  run. 
Wild  apple  !  thou  art  bursting  into  bloom  ; 
Thy  leaves  are  coming,  snowy-blossomed  thorn  ! 
Wake,  buried  lily  !  spirit,  quit  thy  tomb  ; 
And  thou,  shade-loving  hyacinth,  be  born  ! 
Then  haste,  sweet  rose  !  sweet  woodbine,  hymn  the 

morn, 
Whose  dew-drops  shall  illume  with  pearly  light 
Each  grassy  blade  that  thick  embattled  stands 
From  sea  to  sea  ;  while  daisies  infinite 
Uplift  in  praise  their  little  glowing  hands. 
O'er  every  hill  that  under  heaven  expands. 

CCLII 
FOUTAINS  ABBEY. 

A  BBEY  !  for  ever  smiling  pensively, 
■^     How  like  a  thing  of  Nature  dost  thou  rise 
Amid  her  loveliest  works  !  as  if  the  skies, 
Clouded  with  grief,  were  arched  thy  roof  to  be, 
And  the  tall  trees  were  copied  all  from  thee  ! 
Mourning  thy  fortunes — while  the  waters  dim 
Flow  like  the  memory  of  thy  evening  hymn, 
Beautiful  in  their  sorrowing  sympathy  ; 
As  if  they  with  a  weeping  sister  wept. 
Winds  name  thy  name!  But  thou,though  sad,art  calm, 
And  Time  with  thee  his  plighted  troth  hath  kept  ; 
For  harebells  deck  thy  brow,  and,  at  thy  feet. 
Where  sleep  the  proud,  the  bee  and  redbreast  meet, 
Mixing  thy  sighs  with  Nature's  lonely  psalm. 


English  Sonnets  129 

CCLIII 
TO   THE  HAR  VEST  MOON. 

A  GAIN  thou  reignest  in  thy  golden  hall,  s^'^nlIsy 

Rejoicing  in  thy  sway,  fair  queen  of  night  !  Roscoe 

The  ruddy  reapers  hail  thee  with  delight :  1782— 1843 

Theirs  is  the  harvest,  theirs  the  joyous  call 
For  tasks  well  ended  ere  the  season's  fall. 
Sweet  orb,  thou  smilest  from  thy  starry  height  ; 
But  whilst  on  them  thy  beams  are  shedding  bright^ 
To  me  thou  com'st  o'ershadowed  with  a  pall  : 
To  me  alone  the  year  hath  fruitless  flown  ; 
Earth  hath  fulfilled  her  trust  through  all  her  lands, 
The  good  man  gathereth  now  where  he  had  sown, 
And  the  Great  Master  in  his  vineyard  stands  ; 
But  I,  as  if  my  task  were  all  unknown, . 
Come  to  his  gates,  alas  !  with  empty  hands. 


CCLIV  j 

TO   THE  GRASSHOPPER  AND  THE  CRICKET.  \ 

1 

/^^  RE  EN  little  vaulter  in  the  sunny  grass,  Leigh  Hunt          | 

^~^     Catching  your  heart  up  at  the  feel  of  June,  178^^859            i 

Sole  voice  that's  heard  amidst  the  lazy  noon,  j 

When  even  the  bees  lag  at  the  summoning  brass  ;  1 

And  you,  warm  little  housekeeper,  who  class  j 

With  those  who  think  the  candles  come  too  soon,  ! 

Loving  the  fire,  and  with  your  tricksome  tune 

Nick  the  glad  silent  moments  as  they  pass  ;  j 

Oh  sweet  and  tiny  cousins,  that  belong. 

One  to  the  fields,  the  other  to  the  hearth,  -j 

Both  have  your  sunshine ;  both  though  small  are  strong  .  ! 

At  your  clear  hearts  ;  and  both  wefe  sent  on  earth  > 

To  sing  in  thoughtful  ears  this  natural  song  :  j 

In  doors  and  out,  summer  and  winter,  Mirth.  j 

J  i 


130  A  Treasury  of 

CCLV 

KiRKE  White     "^"X /"HAT  art  thou,MiGHTY  One,  and  Avhere  thy  seat? 
1785-1806  Thou  broodest  on  the  calm  that  cheers  the  lands, 

And  thou  dost  bear  within  thine  awful  hands 
The  rolling  thunders  and  the  lightnings  fleet  ; 
Stern  on  thy  dark-wrought  car  of  cloud  and  wind 
Thou  guid'st  the  northern  storm  at  night's  dead  noon, 
Or  on  the  red  wing  of  the  fierce  monsoon 
Uisturb'st  the  sleeping  giant  of  the  Ind. 
In  the  drear  silence  of  the  polar  span 
Dost  thou  repose  ?  or  in  the  solitude 
Of  sultry  tracts,  where  the  lone  caravan 
Hears  nightly  howl  the  tiger's  hungry  brood  ? 
Vain  thought,  the  confines  of  his  throne  to  trace 
Who  glows  through  all  the  fields  of  boundless  space  ! 


CCLVI 

A  S  thus  oppressed  with  many  a  heavy  care, 

(Though  young  yet  sorrowful,)  I  turn  my  feet 
To  the  dark  woodland,  longing  much  to  greet 
The  form  of  Peace,  if  chance  she  sojourn  there  ; 
Deep  thought  and  dismal,  verging  to  despair. 
Fills  my  sad  breast,  and  tired  with  this  vain  coil, 
I  shrink  dismayed  before  life's  upland  toil. 
And  as  amid  the  leaves  the  evening  air 
Whispers  still  melody, — I  think  ere  long. 
When  I  no  more  can  hear,  these  woods  will  speak  ; 
And  then  a  sad  smile  plays  upon  my  cheek, 
And  mournful  phantasies  upon  me  throng. 
And  I  do  ponder  with  most  strange,  delight 
On  the  calm  slumbers  of  the  dead  man's  night. 


1785—1864 


Etiglish  Sonnets  131 

ccLvn 

IS  this  the  spot  where  Rome's  eternal  foe  Charles 

'■  .  .  Strong 

Into  his  snares  the  mighty  legions  drew,  — 

Whence  from  the  carnage,  spiritless  and  few, 

A  remnant  scarcely  reached  her  gates  of  woe  ? 

Is  this  the  stream,  thus  gliding  soft  and  slow. 

That,  from  the  gushing  wounds  of  thousands,  grew 

So  fierce  a  flood,  that  waves  of  crimson  hue 

Rushed  on  the  bosom  of  the  lake  below  ? 

The  mountains  that  gave  back  the  battle-cry 

Are  silent  now  ;  perchance  yon  hillocks  green 

Mark  where  the  bones  of  those  old  warriors  lie. 

Heaven  never  gladdened  a  more  peaceful  scene  ; 

Never  left  softer  breeze  a  fairer  sky 

To  sport  upon  thy  waters,  Thrasymene  ! 


CCLVIII 
THE  EVENING-CLOUD. 

A    CLOUD  lay  cradled  near  the  setting  sun  ;  John  Wilson 

A  gleam  of  crimson  tinged  its  braided  snow  ;         1785—1854 
Long  had  I  watched  the  glory  moving  on, 
O'er  the  still  radiance  of  the  lake  below  ; 
Tranquil  its  spirit  seemed  and  floated  slow  ; 
Even  in  its  very  motion  there  was  rest  ; 
While  every  breath  of  eve  that  chanced  to  blow 
Wafted  the  traveller  to  the  beauteous  West. 
Emblem,  methought,  of  the  departed  soul. 
To  whose  white  robe  the  gleam  of  bliss  is  given  ; 
And  by  the  breath  of  mercy  made  to  roll 
Right  onward  to  the  golden  gates  of  Heaven  ; 
Where  to  the  eye  of  Faith  it  peaceful  lies, 
And  tells  to  man  his  glorious  destinies. 


De  Verb 
1788—1846 


132  A  Treasury  of 

CCLIX 

Sir  Aubrey      T^HERE  is  no  remedy  for  time  misspent ; 
No  healing  for  the  waste  of  idleness, 
Whose  very  languor  is  a  punishment 
Heavier  than  active  souls  can  feel  or  guess. 
O  hours  of  indolence  and  discontent, 
Not  now  to  be  redeemed  !  ye  sting  not  less 
Because  I  know  this  span  of  life  was  lent 
For  lofty  duties,  not  for  selfishness. 
Not  to  be  whiled  away  in  aimless  dreams, 
But  to  improve  ourselves,  and  serve  mankind, 
Life  and  its  choicest  faculties  were  given. 
Man  should  be  ever  better  than  he  seems  ; 
And  shape  his  acts,  and  discipline  his  mind, 
To  walk  adorning  earth,  with  hope  of  heaven. 


CCLX 
THE  PA  SSION-FL 0 IVER. 

A  E.T  thou  a  type  of  beauty,  or  of  power, 
Of  sweet  enjoyment,  or  disastrous  sin  ? 
For  each  thy  name  denoteth,  Passion-flower  ! 
O  no  !  thy  pure  corolla's  depth  within 
We  trace  a  holier  symbol  ;  yea,  a  sign 
'Twixt  God  and  man  ;  a  record  of  that  hour 
When  the  expiatory  act  divine 
Cancelled  that  curse  which  was  our  mortal  dower. 
It  is  the  Cross  !     Never  hath  Psalmist's  tongue 
Fitlier  of  hope  to  human  frailty  sung 
Than  this  mute  teacher  in  a  floret's  breast 
A  star  of  guidance  the  wild  woods  among, 
A  page  with  more  than  lettered  lore  imprest, 
A  beacon  to  the  havens  of  the  blest. 


B 


English  Sonnets  133 

.       CCLXI 
CASTLECONNELL. 

ROAD,  but  not  deep,  along  his  rock-chafed  bed,      ^o/vERr 
In  many  a  sparkling  eddy  winds  the  flood,  1788^846 


Clasped  by  a  margin  of  green  underwood  : 

A  castled  crag,  with  ivy  garlanded. 

Sheer  o'er  the  torrent  frowns  :  above  the  mead 

De  Burgho's  towers,  crumbling  o'er  many  a  rood, 

Stand  gauntly  out  in  airy  solitude, 

Backed  by  yon  furrowed  mountain's  tinted  head. 

Sounds  of  far  people,  mingling  with  the  fall 

Of  waters,  and  the  busy  hum  of  bees. 

And  larks  in  air,  and  throstles  in  the  trees, 

Thrill  the  moist  air  with  murmurs  musical ; 

While  cottage  smoke  goes  drifting  on  the  breeze, 

And  sunny  clouds  are  floating  over  all. 


CCLXII 
THE  ROCK  OF  CASHEL. 

T3  OYAL  and  saintly  Cashel !  I  would  gaze 
Upon  the  wreck  of  thy  departed  powers 
Not  in  the  dewy  light  of  matin  hours. 
Nor  the  meridian  pomp  of  summer's  blaze, 
But  at  the  close  of  dim  autumnal  days, 
When  the  sun's  parting  glance,  through  slanting  showers, 
Sheds  o'er  thy  rock-throned  battlements  and  towers 
Such  awful  gleams  as  brighten  o'er  Decay's 
Prophetic  cheek.     At  such  a  time,  methinks. 
There  breathes  from  thy  lone  courts  and  voiceless  aisles 
A  melancholy'  moral  ;  such  as  sinks 
On  the  lone  traveller's  heart,  amid  the  piles 
Of  vast  Persepolis  on  her  mountain-stand. 
Or  Thebes  half-buried  in  the  desert  sand. 


134 


A  Treasury  of 


Lord  Byron- 

1788— 1824 


CCLXIII 
ON  CHILLON. 

T7  TERNAL  Spirit  of  the  chainless  Mind  ! 

Brightest  in  dungeons,  Liberty,  thou  art — 
For  there  thy  habitation  is  the  heart — 
The  heart  which  love  of  thee  alone  can  bind  ; 
And  when  thy  sons  to  fetters  are  consigned, 
To  fetters,  and  the  damp  vault's  dayless  gloom, 
Their  country  conquers  with  their  martyrdom, 
And  Freedom's  fame  finds  wings  on  every  wind. 
Chillon  !  thy  prison  is  a  holy  place. 
And  thy  sad  floor  an  altar,  for  'twas  trod, 
Until  his  very  steps  have  left  a  trace 
Worn  as  if  thy  cold  pavement  were  a  sod, 
By  Bonnivard  !     May  none  those  marks  efface  ! 
For  they  appeal  from  tyranny  to  God. 


CCLXIV 

KoBERT  RoscoE     A/TORTAL  !  at  last  what  will  it  thee  bestead 
1789— 1850         ■'■    -•-      To  stand  aloft  in  Fame's  proud  vestibule. 
When  thou  hast  buffeted  the  long  misrule 
Of  chance  and  trouble,  and  abroad  hast  spread 
Thine  earthly  glory  ?     Hath  it  profited 
That  to  the  brave  of  old  a  laurel  weed 
The  hand  of  Fame  held  forth,  and  did  areed 
The  myrtle  leaves  to  wreathe  the  Poet's  head  ? 
Within  the  grave's  dark  cell  how  soon  consume 
Those  myrtle  leaves  and  wreaths  of  vanity. 
When  death's  cold   breath   has   sucked   their   rich 

perfume  ! 
But  in  the  blessed  climate  of  the  sky 
Thou  mayst  attain  those  flowers  that  ever  bloom. 
And  pour  their  fragrance  through  eternity. 


English  Sonnets  135 

CCLXV 

r\  BLESSED  be  the  tear  that  sadly  rolled  RobertRoscoe 

^~^^     For  me,  my  mother  !  down  thy  sacred  cheek  ;       1789— 1850 

That  with  a  silent  fervour  did  bespeak 

A  fonder  tale  than  language  ever  told  ; 

And  poured  such  balm  upon  my  spirit,  weak 

And  wounded,  in  a  world  so  harsh  and  cold, 

As  that  Avherewith  an  angel  would  uphold 

Those  that  astray  heaven's  holy  guidance  seek. 

And  though  it  passed  away,  and,  soon  as  shed, 

Seemed  ever  lost  to  vanish  from  thine  eye, 

Yet  only  to  the  dearest  store  it  fled 

Of  my  remembrance,  where  it  now  doth  lie. 

Like  a  thrice  precious  relic  of  the  dead. 

The  chief  est  jewel  of  its  treasury. 


CCLXVI 

T  WILL  not  praise  the  often-flattered  rose,  Thomas 

Or,  virgin-like,  with  blushing  charms  half  seen,  bleda 

Or  when,  in  dazzling  splendour,  like  a  queen,  ^^^°   '  ^ 

All  her  magnificence  of  state  she  shows  ; 
No,  nor  that  nun-like  lily  which  but  blows 
Beneath  the  valley's  cool  and  shady  screen  ; 
Nor  yet  the  sun-flower,  that  with  warrior  mien 
Still  eyes  the  orb  of  glory  where  it  glows  ; 
But  thou,  neglected  Wall-flower  !  to  my  breast 
And  Muse  art  dearest,  wildest,  sweetest  flower  ! 
To  whom  alone  the  privilege  is  given 
Proudly  to  root  thyself  above  the  rest. 
As  Genius  does,  and  from  thy  rocky  tower 
Lend  fragrance  to  the  purest  breath  of  heaven. 


136 


A  Treasury  of 


CCLXVII 


THE  SEA    CAVE. 


Thomas 
doubledav 

1790 — 1870 


T  T  ARDLY  we  breathe,  although  the  air  be  free 

How  massively  doth  awful  Nature  pile 
The  living  rock,  like  some  cathedral  aisle, 
Sacred  to  silence  and  the  solemn  sea. 
How  that  clear  pool  lies  sleeping  tranquilly. 
And  under  its  glassed  surface  seems  to  smile, 
With  many  hues,  a  mimic  grove  the  while 
Of  foliage  submarine — shrub,  flower,  and  tree. 
Beautiful  scene  !  and  fitted  to  allure 
The  printless  footsteps  of  some  sea-born  maid, 
Who  here,  with  her  green  tresses  disarrayed, 
'Mid  the  clear  bath,  unf earing  and  secure. 
May  sport  at  noontide  in  the  caverned  shade, 
Cold  as  the  shadow,  as  the  waters  pure. 


Brvan  Waller 
Procter 

1790 — 1874 


CCLXVIII 


A  UT  U M N . 


T^HERE  is  a  fearful  spirit  busy  now : 

Already  have  the  elements  unfurled 
Their  banners :  the  great  sea-wave  is  upcurled  : 
The  cloud  comes  :  the  fierce  winds  begin  to  blow 
About,  and  blindly  on  their  errands  go, 
And  quickly  will  the  pale  red  leaves  be  hurled 
From  their  dry  boughs,  and  all  the  forest  world, 
Stripped  of  its  pride,  be  like  a  desert  show. 
I  love  that  moaning  music  which  I  hear 
In  the  bleak  gusts  of  Autumn,  for  the  soul 
Seems  gathering  tidings  from  another  sphere  ; 
And,  in  sublime  mysterious  sympathy, 
Man's  bounding  spirit  ebbs  and  swells  more  high, 
Accordant  to  the  billow's  loftier  roll 


o 


English  Sonnets  137 

CCLXIX 

IMAGINATION. 
H,  for  that  winched  steed,  Bellerophon  !  Brvan  waller 

'  o  )  r  Procteu 


That  Pallas  gave  thee  in  her  infinite  grace 
And  love  for  innocence,  when  thou  didst  face 
The  treble-shaped  Chimaera.     But  he  is  gone 
That  struck  the  sparkling  stream  from  Helicon  ; 
And  never  hath  one  risen  in  his  place, 
Stamped  with  the  features  of  that  mighty  race. 
Yet  wherefore  grieve  I — seeing  how  easily 
The  plumed  spirit  may  its  journey  take 
Through  yon  blue  regions  of  the  middle  air, 
And  note  all  things  below  that  own  a  grace  : 
Mountain,  and  cataract,  and  silent  lake  ; 
And  wander  in  the  fields  of  poesy, 
Where  avarice  never  comes,  and  seldom  care  ! 


CCLXX 
TO    THE   SKY-LARK.. 

r\  EARLIEST  singer  !     O  care-charming  bird  ! 

Married  to  morning,  by  a  sweeter  hymn 
Than  priest  e'er  chanted  from  his  cloister  dim 
At  midnight, — or  veiled  virgin's  holier  word 
At  sunrise  or  the  paler  evening  heard  ; 
To  which  of  all  Heaven's  young  and  lovely  Hours, 
Who  wreathe  soft  light  in  hyacinthine  bowers. 
Beautiful  spirit,  is  thy  suit  preferred  ? 
Unlike  the  creatures  of  this  low  dull  earth. 
Still  dost  thou  woo,  although  thy  suit  be  won  ; 
And  thus  thy  mistress  bright  is  pleased  ever  : 
Oh  !  lose  not  thou  this  mark  of  finer  birth  ; 
So  mayst  thou  yet  live  on,  from  sun  to  sun, 
Thy  joy  unchecked,  thy  sweet  song  silent  never 


1790— 1874 


138 


A  Treasury  of 


CCLXXI 


THE   SEA— IN  CALM. 


Bryan  Waller    T    OOK  what  immortal  floods  the  sunset  pours 
—  "^    Upon  us  ! — Mark  how  still  (as  though  in  dreams 

Bound)  the  once  wild  and  terrible  Ocean  seems  ! 
How  silent  are  the  winds  !     No  billow  roars  ; 
But  all  is  tranquil  as  Elysian  shores. 
The  silver  margin  which  aye  runneth  round 
The  moon-enchanted  sea  hath  here  no  sound 
Even  Echo  speaks  not  on  these  radiant  moors. 
What  !  is  the  giant  of  the  ocean  dead, 
Whose  strength  was  all  unmatched  beneath  the  sun 
No  :  he  reposes.     Now  his  toils  are  done, 
More  quiet  than  the  babbling  brooks  is  he. 
So  mightiest  powers  by  deepest  calms  are  fed. 
And  sleep,  how  oft,  in  things  that  gentlest  be  ! 


Percy  Bysshe 

Shelley 

1792 — 1822 


CCLXXII 

OZYMANDIAS. 

T  MET  a  traveller  from  an  antique  land 

Who  said  :  Two  vast  and  trunkless  legs  of  stone 
Stand  in  the  desert.     Near  them,  on  the  sand, 
Half  sunk,  a  shattered  visage  lies,  whose  frown 
And  wrinkled  lip  and  sneer  of  cold  command 
Tell  that  its  sculptor  well  those  passions  read 
Which  yet  survive,  stamped  on  these  lifeless  things, 
The  hand  that  mocked  them  and  the  heart  that  fed  ; 
And  on  the  pedestal  these  words  appear  : 
'  My  name  is  Ozymandias,  king  of  kings  : 
Look  on  my  works,  ye  Mighty,  and  despair  ! ' 
Nothing  beside  remains.     Round  the  decay 
Of  that  colossal  wreck,  boundless  and  bare 
The  lone  and  level  sands  stretch  far  away. 


English  Sonnets  139 

CCLXXIII 

TO  THE   WEST  WIND. 

I 

OWILD  West  Wind,  thou  breath  of  Autumn's    Percy  Bysshe 
Shelley 
being,  — 

jyq2^— 1022 

Thou,  from  whose  unseen  presence  the  leaves  dead 
Are  driven,  Hke  ghosts  from  an  enchanter  fleeing, 
Yellow,  and  black,  and  pale,  and  hectic  red. 
Pestilence-stricken  multitudes  :  O  thou 
Who  chariotest  to  their  dark  wintry  bed 
The  winged  seeds,  where  they  lie  cold  and  low 
Each  like  a  corpse  within  its  grave,  until 
Thine  azure  sister  of  the  spring  shall  blow 
Her  clarion  o'er  the  dreaming  earth,  and  fill 
(Driving  sweet  buds  like  flocks  to  feed  in  air) 
With  living  hues  and  odours  plain  and  hill : 
Wild  Spirit,  which  art  moving  every  where  ; 
Destroyer  and  preserver  ;  hear,  O  hear  ! 


CCLXXIV 

'T'HOU  on  whose  stream,  'mid  the  steep  sky's  commotion, 

Loose  clouds  like  earth's  decaying  leaves  are  shed. 
Shook  from  the  tangled  boughs  of  Heaven  and  Ocean, 
Angels  of  rain  and  lightning  :  there  are  spread 
On  the  blue  surface  of  thine  airy  surge, 
Like  the  bright  hair  uplifted  from  the  head 
Of  some  fierce  Msenad,  even  from  the  dim  verge 
Of  the  horizon  to  the  zenith's  height. 
The  locks  of  the  approaching  storm.     Thou  dirge 
Of  the  dying  year,  to  which  this  closing  night 
Will  be  the  dome  of  a  vast  sepulchre. 
Vaulted  with  all  thy  congregated  might 
Of  vapours,  from  whose  solid  atmosphere 
Black  rain,  and  fire,  and  hail,  will  burst  :  O  hear  ! 


140  A  Treasury  of 


CCLXXV 

TO  THE   WEST  WIND. 

3 


Percy  bysshe    'T^HOU  who  didst  wakeii  from  his  summer  dreams 

Shelley  I 

The  blue  Mediterranean,  where  he  lay, 


1792 — 1822 


Lulled  by  the  coil  of  his  crystalline  streams. 
Beside  a  pumice  isle  in  Baise's  bay, 
And  saw  in  sleep  old  palaces  and  towers 
Quivering  within  the  wave's  intenser  day. 
All  overgrown  with  azure  moss  and  flowers 
So  sweet  the  sense  faints  picturing  them  !     Thou 
For  whose  path  the  Atlantic's  level  powers 
Cleave  themselves  into  chasms,  while  far  below 
The  sea-blooms  and  the  oozy  woods  which  wear 
The  sapless  foliage  of  the  ocean,  know 
Thy  voice,  and  suddenly  grow  grey  with  fear. 
And  tremble  and  despoil  themselves  :  O  hear  ! 


CCLXXVI  ■ 

i 

TF  I  were  a  dead  leaf  thou  mightest  bear  ;  ] 

If  I  were  a  swift  cloud  to  fly  with  thee  ; 

A  wave  to  pant  beneath  thy  power,  and  share  | 

The  impulse  of  thy  strength,  only  less  free  ] 
Than  thou,  O  uncontrollable  !     If  even 

I  were  as  in  my  boyhood,  and  could  be  j 

The  comrade  of  thy  wanderings  over  heaven,  I 

As  then,  when  to  outstrip  thy  skiey  speed  i 

Scarce  seemed  a  vision,  I  would  ne'er  have  striven  | 

As  thus  with  thee  in  prayer  in  my  sore  need.  i 

Oh  !  lift  me  as  a  wave,  a  leaf,  a  cloud  !  ; 

I  fall  upon  the  thorns  of  life  !     I  bleed  !  \ 
A  heavy  weight  of  hours  has  ^hained  and  bowed 

One  too  like  thee  :  tameless,  and  swift,  and  proud.  i 


Efielish  Sonnets  141 


CCLXXVII 


A/r  AKE  me  thy  lyre,  even  as  the  forest  is  :  ^^"shel^ley "^ 

^    ^      What  if  my  leaves  are  falling  like  its  own  !  179^822 

The  tumult  of  thy  mighty  harmonies 

Will  take  from  both  a  deep,  autumnal  tone, 

Sweet  though  in  sadness.     Be  thou,  spirit  fierce, 

My  spirit  !     Be  thou  me,  impetuous  one ! 

Drive  my  dead  thoughts  over  the  'universe, 

Like  withered  leaves  to  quicken  a  new  birth ! 

And,  by  the  incantation  of  this  verse. 

Scatter,  as  from  an  unextinguished  hearth 

Ashes  and  sparks,  my  words  among  mankind  ! 

Be  through  my  lips  to  unawakened  earth 

The  trumpet  of  a  prophecy  !     O  wind, 

If  Winter  comes,  can  Spring  be  far  behind  ? 


CCLXXVIII 
POLITICAL   GREA  TNESS. 

"\TOR  happiness,  nor  majesty,  nor  fame, 

Nor  peace,  nor  strength,  nor  skill  in  arms  or  arts, 
Shepherd  those  herds  whom  tyranny  makes  tame  ; 
Verse  echoes  not  one  beating  of  their  hearts. 
History  is  but  the  shadow  of  their  shame. 
Art  veils  her  glass,  or  from  the  pageant  starts, 
As  to  oblivion  their  blind  millions  fleet. 
Staining  that  Heaven  with  obscene  imagery 
Of  their  own  likeness.     What  are  numbers  knit 
By  force  or  custom  ?     Man  who  man  would  be, 
Must  rule  the  empire  of  himself  ;  in  it 
Must  be  supreme,  establishing  his  throne 
On  vanquished  will,  quelling  the  anarchy 
Of  hopes  and  fears,  being  himself  alone. 


142 


A  Treasury  of 


Percy  Bysshe 

Shelley 

1792 — 1822 


CCLXXIX 

"Y^E  hasten  to  the  dead  !     What  seek  ye  there, 

Ye  restless  thougjits  and  busy  purposes 
Of  the  idle  brain,  which  the  world's  livery  wear  ? 
O  thou  quick  heart  which  pantest  to  possess 
All  that  anticipation  feigneth  fair  ! 
Thou  vainly  curious  mind,  which  wouldest  guess 
Whence  thou  didst  come,  and  whither  thou  mayst  go, 
And  that  which  never  yet  was  known  wouldst  know — 
O,  whither  hasten  ye,  that  thus  ye  press 
With  such  swift  feet  life's  green  and  pleasant  path, 
Seeking  alike  from  happiness  and  woe 
A  refuge  in  the  cavern  of  grey  death  ? 
O  heart,  and  mind,  and  thoughts  !  what  thing  do  you 
Hope  to  inherit  in  the  grave  below  ? 


Edward  Irvlnc 
1792— 1834 


CCLXXX 
TO    THE  MEMORY  OF  SAMUEL  MARTIN, 

MY   VENERABLE   GRANDFATHEK-1N-LA\V,    WHO    WAS    TAKEN    AWAY    FROM   US 

IN  THE   NINETIETH    YEAR   OF    HIS    LIFE,    AND   THE 

SIXTY-EIGHTH    OF   HIS    MINISTRY. 

T^  ARE  WELL  on  man's  dark  journey  o'er  the  deep, 
Thou  sire  of  sires  !  whose  bow  in  strength  hath 
stood 
These  threescore  years  and  ten  that  thou  hast  wooed 
Men's  souls  to  heaven.     In  Jesus  fall'n  asleep. 
Around  thy  couch  three  generations  weep, 
Reared  on  thy  knees  with  wisdom's  heavenly  food, 
And  by  thy  counsels  taught  to  choose  the  good  ; 
Who  in  thy  footsteps  press  up  Zion's  steep, 
To  reach  that  temple  which  but  now  did  ope 
And  let  their  father  in.     O'er  his  bier  wake 
No  doleful  strain,  but  high  the  note  of  hope 
And  praise  uplift  to  God,  who  did  him  make 
A  faithful  shepherd,  of  his  Church  a  prop  ; 
And  of  his  seed  did  faithful  shepherds  take. 


English  Sonnets                          143  j 

I 

CCLXXXI  .                   I 

T '^7'HEN  I  behold  yon  arch  magnificent  John  Keble        | 

Spanning  the  gorgeous  West,  the  autumnal  bed  1792-1866 

Where  the  great  Sun  now  hides  his  weary  head,  J 

With  here  and  there  a  purple  isle,  that  rent  i 

From  that  huge  cloud,  their  solid  continent,  | 

Seem  floating  in  a  sea  of  golden  light,  J 

A  fire  is  kindled  in  my  musing  sprite,  1 

And  Fancy  whispers  :  Such  the  glories  lent  \ 

To  this  our  mortal  life  ;  most  glowing  fair,  I 

But  built  on  clouds,  and  melting  while  we  gaze.  i 
Yet  since  those  shadowy  lights  sure  witness  bear 

Of  One  not  seen,  the  undying  Sun  and  Source  \ 

Of  good  and  fair,  who  wisely  them  surveys  ^; 
Will  use  them  well  to  cheer  his  heavenward  course. 


CCLXXXII 
AT  HOOKERS    TOMB. 


T^HE  grey-eyed  Morn  was  saddened  with  a  shower, 

A  silent  shower,  that  trickled  down  so  still 
Scarce  drooped  beneath  its  weight  the  tenderest  flower. 
Scarce  could  you  trace  it  on  the  twinkling  rill. 
Or  moss-stone  bathed  in  dew.     It  was  an  hour 
Most  meet  for  prayer  beside  thy  lowly  grave. 
Most  for  thanksgiving  meet,  that  Heaven  such  power 
To  thy  serene  and  humble  spirit  gave. 
*  Who  sow  good  seed  with  tears  shall  reap  in  joy.' 
So  thought  I  as  I  watched  the  gracious  rain, 
And  deemed  it  like  that  silent  sad  employ 
Whence  sprung  thy  glory's  harvest,  to  remain 
For  ever.     God  hath  sworn  to  lift  on  high 
Who  sinks  himself  by  true  humility. 


144  -^  Treasury  of 

CCLXXXIII 
SPRING  SHOWERS. 

John  Keble     '  I  ^HE  lovelicst  flowers  the  closest  cling  to  earth, 
1792—1866  And  they  first  feel  the  sun  :  so  violets  blue  ; 

So  the  soft  star-like  primrose  drenched  in  dew — 
The  happiest  of  Spring's  happy,  fragrant  birth. 
To  gentlest  touches  sweetest  tones  reply. 
Still  humbleness  with  her  low-breathed  voice 
Can  steal  o'er  man's  proud  heart,  and  win  his  choice 
From  earth  to  heaven,  with  mightier  witchery 
Than  eloquence  or  wisdom  e'er  could  own. 
Bloom  on  then  in  your  shade,  contented  bloom, 
Sweet  flowers,  nor  deem  yourselves  to  all  unknown, — 
Heaven  knows  you,  by  whose  gales  and  dews  ye  thrive; 
They  know,  who  one  day  for  their  altered  doom 
Shall  thank  you,  taught  by  you  to  abase  themselves 
and  live. 

CCLXXXIV 
THE  LAST  OF  APRIL. 

John  Clare     /^LD  April  wancs,  and  her  last  dewy  mom 
1793— 1864       ^-^      Her  death-bed  steeps  in  tears  ;  to  hail  the  May 
New  blooming  blossoms  'neath  the  sun  are  born. 
And  all  poor  April's  charms  are  swept  away. 
The  early  primrose,  peeping  once  so  gay. 
Is  now  choked  up  with  many  a  mounting  weed, 
And  the  poor  violet  we  once  admired 
Creeps  in  the  grass  unsought  for ;   flowers  succeed, 
Gaudy  and  new,  and  more  to  be  desired, 
And  of  the  old  the  schoolboy  seemeth  tired. 
So  with  us  all,  poor  April,  as  with  thee  I 
Each  hath  his  day  ; — the  future  brings  my  fears  : 
Friends  may  grow  weary,  new  flowers  rising  be, 
And  my  last  end,  like  thine,  be  steeped  in  tears. 


English  Sonnets  145 

CCLXXXV 
THE    THRUSH'S  NEST. 

V^ITHIN  a  thick  and  spreading  hawthorn  bush,     John  clare 
That  overhung  a  molehill  large  and  round,         1793^864 
I  heard  from  morn  to  morn  a  merry  thrush 
Sing  hymns  to  sunrise,  and  I  drank  the  sound 
With  joy  ;  and,  often  an  intruding  guest, 
I  watched  her  secret  toils  from  day  to  day, — 
How  true  she  warped  the  moss  to  form  a  nest, 
And  modelled  it  within  with  wood  and  clay  ; 
And  by  and  by,  like  heath-bells  gilt  with  dew. 
There  lay  her  shining  eggs,  as  bright  as  flowers, 
Ink-spotted-over  shells  of  greeny  blue  ; 
And  there  I  witnessed,  in  the  sunny  hours, 
A  brood  of  nature's  minstrels  chirp  and  fly. 
Glad  as  that  sunshine  and  the  laughing  sky. 


CCLXXXVI 
THE   SEDGE-BIRD'S  NEST. 

"CTXED  in  a  white-thorn  bush,  its  summer  guest. 
So  low,  e'en  grass  o'er-topped  its  tallest  twig, 
A  sedge-bird  built  its  little  benty  nest. 
Close  by  the  meadow  pool  and  wooden  brig, 
Where  schoolboys  every  morn  and  eve  did  pass, 
In  seeking  nests,  and  finding,  deeply  skilled. 
Searching  each  bush  and  taller  clump  of  grass. 
Where'er  was  likehhood  of  bird  to  build. 
Yet  did  she  hide  her  habitation  long, 
And  keep  her  little  brood  from  danger's  eye, 
Hidden  as  secret  as  a  cricket's  song. 
Till  they,  well-fledged,  o'er  widest  pools  could  fly  : 
Proving  that  Providence  is  ever  nigh. 
To  guard  the  simplest  of  her  charge  from  wrong. 

K 


146  A  Treasury  of 

CCLXXXVII 
TO    THE  MEMORY  OF  BLOOMFIELD. 

John  Clare      OWEET  unassuming  minstrel  !  not  to  thee 
1793— 1864  The  dazzling  fashions  of  the  day  belong  ; 

Nature's  wild  pictures,  field,  and  cloud,  and  tree, 
And  quiet  brooks,  far  distant  from  the  throng, 
In  murmurs  tender  as  the  toiling  bee. 
Make  the  sweet  music  of  thy  gentle  song. 
Well  !  Nature  owns  thee  :  let  the  crowd  pass  by  ; 
The  tide  of  Fashion  is  a  stream  too  strong 
For  pastoral  brooks,  that  gently  flow  and  sing  : 
But  Nature  is  their  source,  and  earth  and  sky 
Their  annual  offering  to  her  current  bring. 
Thy  gentle  muse  and  memory  need  no  sigh  ; 
For  thine  shall  murmur  on  to  many  a  spring, 
When  prouder  streams  are  summer-burnt  and  dry. 

CCLXXXVIII 

TO    DE  WINT. 

~p\EWINT  !  I  would  not  flatter,  nor  would  I 

Pretend  to  critic-skill  in  this  thy  art  ; 
Yet  in  thy  landscapes  I  can  well  descry 
The  breathing  hues  as  Nature's  counterpart. 
No  painted  peaks,  no  wild  romantic  sky, 
No  rocks,  nor  mountains,  as  the  rich  sublime, 
Hath  made  thee  famous  ;  but  the  sunny  truth 
Of  Nature,  that  doth  mark  thee  for  all  time, 
Found  on  our  level  pastures  : — spots,  forsooth. 
Where  common  skill  sees  nothing  deemed  divine  ; 
Yet  here  a  worshipper  was  found  in  thee. 
And  thy  young  pencil  worked  such  rich  surprise. 
That  rushy  flats,  befringed  with  willow  tree, 
Rivalled  the  beauties  of  Italian  skies. 


English  Sonnets  147 

CCLXXXIX 
FIRST  SIGHT  OF  SPRING. 

'T'HE  hazel-blooms,  in  threads  of  crimson  hue,  Jo""  Clare 

Peep  through  the  swelling  buds,  foretelling  Spring,     1793-1864 
Ere  yet  a  white-thorn  leaf  appears  in  view, 
Or  March  finds  throstles  pleased  enough  to  sing 
To  the  old  touchwood  tree  woodpeckers  cling 
A  moment,  and  their  harsh-toned  notes  renew  ; 
In  happier  mood,  the  stockdove  claps  his  wing  ; 
The  squirrel  sputters  up  the  powdered  oak, 
With  tail  cocked  o'er  his  head,  and  ears  erect. 
Startled  to  hear  the  woodman's  understroke  ; 
And  with  the  courage  which  his  fears  collect, 
He  hisses  fierce  half  malice  and  half  glee, 
Leaping  from  branch  to  branch  about  the  tree, 
In  winter's  foliage,  moss  and  lichens,  deckt. 


ccxc 
THE  HAPPY  BIRD. 

T^HE  happy  white-throat  on  the  swaying  bough, 
Rocked  by  the  impulse  of  the  gadding  wind 
That  ushers  in  the  showers  of  April,  now 
Carols  right  joyously  ;  and  now  reclined. 
Crouching,  she  clings  close  to  her  moving  seat, 
To  keep  her  hold  ; — and  till  the  wind  for  rest 
Pauses,  she  mutters  inward  melodies. 
That  seem  her  heart's  rich  thinkings  to  repeat. 
But  when  the  branch  is  still,  her  little  breast 
Swells  out  in  rapture's  gushing  symphonies  ; 
And  then,  against  her  brown  wing  softly  prest. 
The  wind  comes  playing,  an  enraptured  guest ; 
This  way  and  that  she  swings — till  gusts  arise 
More  boisterous  in  their  play,  then  off  she  flies. 


148  A  Treasury  of 

ccxci 
BUR  THORP  OAK. 

John  Clare      /^LD  notcd  oak  !  I  SEW  thee  in  a  mood 
1793— 1864       ^'-^     Of  vague  indifference ;  and  yet  with  me 
Thy  memory,  like  thy  fate,  hath  lingering  stood 
For  years,  thou  hermit,  in  the  lonely  sea 
Of  grass  that  waves  around  thee  ! — Solitude 
Paints  not  a  lonelier  picture  to  the  view, 
Burthorp  !  than  thy  one  melancholy  tree, 
Age-rent,  and  shattered  to  a  stump.     Yet  new 
Leaves  come  upon  each  rift  and  broken  limb 
With  every  spring ;  and  Poesy's  visions  swim 
Around  it,  of  old  days  and  chivalry  ; 
And  desolate  fancies  bid  the  eyes  grow  dim 
With  feelings,  that  earth's  grandeur  should  decay, 
And  all  its  olden  memories  pass  away. 


CCXCII 
THE  CRAB-TREE. 

OPRING  comes  anew,  and  brings  each  little  pledge 
*^    That  still,  as  wont,  my  childish  heart  deceives  : 
I  stoop  again  for  violets  in  the  hedge. 
Among  the  ivy  and  old  withered  leaves  ; 
And  often  mark,  amid  the  clumps  of  sedge, 
The  pooty-shells  I  gathered  when  a  boy  : 
But  cares  have  claimed  me  many  an  evil  day, 
And  chilled  the  relish  which  I  had  for  joy. 
Yet  when  crab-blossoms  blush  among  the  May, 
As  erst  in  years  gone  by,  I  scramble  now 
Up  'mid  the  bramble  for  my  old  esteems. 
Filling  my  hands  with  many  a  blooming  bough  ; 
Till  the  heart-stirring  past  as  present  seems, 
Save  the  bright  sunshine  of  those  fairy  dreams. 


English  Sonnets  149 

CCXCIII 
CARELESS  RAMBLES. 

T  LOVE  to  wander  at  my  idle  will  Joh>^are 

In  summer's  joyous  prime  about  the  fields,  1793— 1864 

To  kneel  when  thirsty  at  the  little  rill, 
And  sip  the  draught  its  pebbly  bottom  yields  ; 
And  where  the  maple  bush  its  fountain  shields. 
To  lie,  and  rest  a  sultry  hour  away. 
Cropping  the  swelling  peascod  from  the  land  ; 
Or  'mid  the  sheltering  woodland-walks  to  stray, 
Where  oaks  for  aye  o'er  their  old  shadows  stand  ; 
'Neath  whose  dark  foliage,  with  a  Avelcome  hand, 
I  pluck  the  luscious  strawberry,  ripe  and  red 
As  Beauty's  lips  ; — and  in  my  fancy's  dreams, 
As  'mid  the  velvet  moss  I  musing  tread. 
Feel  Life  as  lovely  as  her  picture  seems. 

ccxciv 
THE  LLLLES  OF   THE  FLELD. 

'  CONSIDER   THE   LILIES   OF  THE   FIELD.' 

FLOWERS  !  when  the  Saviour's  calm,  benignant        Felicia 
Dorothea 
eye  Hemans 

Fell  on  your  gentle  beauty  ;  when  from  you  1794— 1835 

That  heavenly  lesson  for  all  hearts  He  drew, 

Eternal,  universal,  as  the  sky, — 

Then  in  the  bosom  -of  your  purity 

A  voice  He  set  as  in  a  temple-shrine. 

That  life's  quick  travellers  ne'er  might  pass  y«u  by 

Unwarned  of  that  sweet  oracle  divine. 

And  though  too  oft  it's  low,  celestial  sound 

By  the  harsh  notes  of  work-day  care  is  drowned. 

And  the  loud  steps  of  vain,  unlistening  haste, 

Yet  the  great  ocean  hath  no  tone  of  power 

Mightier  to  reach  the  soul  in  thought's  hushed  hour, 

Than  yours,  ye,  Lilies  I  chosen  thus  and  graced. 


150  A  Treasury  of 

ccxcv 
REPOSE  OF  A   HOL  V  FAMIL  V. 

FROM   AN    OLD    ITALIAN    PICTURE. 

jFelicia^       T  T^DER  a  palm-tree,  by  the  green  old  Nile, 
Hemans         ^^      Lulled  on  his  mother's  breast,  the  fair  child  lies, 

1794—1835       With  dove-like  breathings,  and  a  tender  smile 
Brooding  above  the  slumber  of  his  eyes  ; 
While,  through  the  stillness  of  the  burning  skies, 
Lo  !  the  dread  works  of  Egypt's  buried  kings, 
Temple  and  pyramid,  beyond  him  rise, 
Regal  and  still  as  everlasting  things. 
Vain  pomps  !  from  him  with  that  pure  flowery  cheek, 
Soft  shadow'd  by  his  mother's  drooping  head, 
A  new-born  spirit,  mighty  and  yet  meek, 
O'er  the  whole  world  like  vernal  air  shall  spread, 
And  bid  all  earthly  grandeurs  cast  the  crown, 
Before  the  suffering  and  the  lowly,  down. 

ccxcvi 
OJV  A   REMEMBERED  PICTURE  OF  CHRIST: 

AN   ECCE  HOMO   BY   LEONARDO    DA    VINCI. 

T  MET  that  image  on  a  mirthful  day 

Of  youth  ;  and,  sinking  with  a  stilled  surprise, 
The  pride  of  life,  before  those  holy  eyes,  . 
In  my  quick  heart  died  thoughtfully  away, 
Abashed  to  mute  confession  of  a  sway 
Awful  though  meek  ;  and  now  that  from  the  strings 
Of  my  eoul's  lyre  the  tempest's  mighty  wings 
Have  struck  forth  tones  which  then  unwakened  lay  ; 
Now  that  around  the  deep  life  of  my  mind 
Affections  deathless  as  itself  have  twined. 
Oft  does  the  pale  bright  vision  still  float  by  ; 
But  more  divinely  sweet,  and  speaking  now 
Of  One  whose  pity,  throned  on  that  sad  brow, 
Sounded  all  depths  of  love,  grief,  death,  humanity. 


English  Sonnets  151 

CCXCVII 
FLIGHT  OF    rilE    SPIRIT. 

"\1  THITHER,  oh  !  whither  wilt  thou  wing  thy  way?      Dorothea 
What  solemn  region  first  upon  thy  sight  y^^'S' 

Shall  break,  unveiled  for  terror  or  delight  ?  '794-1835 

What  hosts,  magnificent  in  dread  array, 
My  spirit !  when  thy  prison-house  of  clay 
After  long  strife  is  rent  ?     Fond,  fruitless  quest ! 
The  unfledged  bird,  within  his  narrow  nest, 
Sees  but  a  few  green  branches  o'er  him  play. 
And  through  their  parting  leaves,  by  fits  revealed, 
A  glimpse  of  summer  sky  ;  nor  knows  the  field 
Wherein  his  dormant  powers  must  yet  be  tried. 
Thou  art  that  bird  ! — of  what  beyond  thee  lies 
Far  in  the  untracked,  immeasurable  skies 
Knowing  but  this — that  thou  shalt  find  thy  Guide  ! 


CCXCVIII  i 

SABBATH  SONNET.  \ 

I 

T  T  OW  many  blessed  groups  this  hour  are  bending,  \ 

Through  England's  primrose  meadow-paths,  their  way  ! 

Towards  spire  and  tower,  'midst  shadowy  elms  ascending,  i 

Whence  the  sweet  chimes  proclaim  the  hallowed  day  !  ] 

The  halls  from  old  heroic  ages  gray  j 

Pour  their  fair  children  forth  ;  and  hamlets  low,  1 

With  whose  thick  orchard-blooms  the  soft  winds  play,  ! 

Send  out  their  inmates  in  a  happy  flow,  j 

Like  a  freed  vernal  stream.     I  may  not  tread  ; 

With  them  those  pathways,  to  the  feverish  bed  \ 

Of  sickness  bound  ;  yet,  O  my  God  !  I  bless  I 

Thy  mercy,  that  with  Sabbath  peace  hath  filled  | 

My  chastened  heatt,  and  all  its  throbbings  stilled  ■ 

To  one  deep  calm  of  lowliest  thankfulness.  i 


*> 


152  A  Treasury  of 

ccxcix 

John_Keats      a-v  solitude  !  if  I  must  with  thee  dwell, 
179s— 1821       ^-^     Lgl;  it  j^Qt  ]3g  among  the  jumbled  heap 

Of  murky  buildings  :  climb  with  me  the  steep, — 

Nature's  observatory — whence  the  dell, 

Its  flowery  slopes,  its  river's  crystal  swell, 

May  seem  a  span  ;  let  me  thy  vigils  keep 

'Mongst  boughs  pavilioned,  where  the  deer's  swift 

leap 

Startles  the  wild  bee  from  the  foxglove  bell.  1 

But  though  I'll  gladly  trace  these  scenes  with  thee,  j 

Yet  the  sweet  converse  of  an  innocent  mind,  j 

Whose  words  are  images  of  thoughts  refined,  1 

Is  my  soul's  pleasure  ;  and  it  sure  must  be  i 

Almost  the  highest  bliss  of  human-kind,  : 

When  to  thy  haunts  two  kindred  spirits  flee. 


I 

T^O  one  who  has  been  long  in  city  pent  j 
"*■        'Tis  very  sweet  to  look  into  the  fair 

And  open  face  of  heaven, — to  breathe  a  prayer  : 
Full  in  the  smile  of  the  blue  firmament. 

AVho  is  more  happy,  when,  with  heart's  content,  ; 

Fatigued  he  sinks  into  some  pleasant  lair  '■ 

Of  wavy  grass,  and  reads  a  debonair  \ 

And  gentle  tale  of  love  and  languishment  ?  | 

Returning  home  at  evening,  with  an  ear  j 

Catching  the  notes  of  Philomel, — an  eye  \ 

Watching  the  sailing  cloudlet's  bright  career,  •= 

He  mourns  that  day  so  soon  has  glided  by  :  ! 

Even  like  the  passage  of  an  angel's  tear  : 

That  falls  through  the  clear  ether  silently.  ; 


••  English  Sonnets  153 

ccci 
ON  FIRST  LOOKING  INTO  CHAPMAN S  HOMER. 

IV/TUCH  have  I  travelled  in  the  realms  of  gold,  Jo»n  Keats 

And  many  goodly  states  and  kingdoms  seen  ;        1795—1821 
Round  many  western  islands  have  I  been 
Which  bards  in  fealty  to  Apollo  hold. 
Oft  of  one  wide  expanse  had  I  been  told 
That  deep-browed  Homer  ruled  as  his  demesne  : 
Yet  did  T  never  breathe  its  pure  serene 
Till  I  heard  Chapman  speak  out  loud  and  bold  : 
Then  felt  I  like  some  watcher  of  the  skies 
When  a  new  planet  swims  into  his  ken  ; 
Or  like  stout  Cortez,  when  with  eagle  eyes 
He  stared  at  the  Pacific — and  all  his  men 
Looked  at  each  other  with  a  wild  surmise — 
Silent,  upon  a  peak  in  Darien. 


CCCII 
ON  THE  GRASSHOPPER  AND  CRICKET. 

'  I  "HE  poetry  of  earth  is  never  dead  :  \ 

When  all  the  birds  are  faint  with  the  hot  sun. 

And  hide  in  cooling  trees,  a  voice  will  run  | 

From  hedge  to  hedge  about  the  new-mown  mead ;  ' 

That  is  the  grasshopper's — he  takes  the  lead  ■ 

In  summer  luxury, — he  has  never  done  ; 
With  his  delights  ;  for  when  tired  out  with  fun, 

He  rests  at  ease  beneath  some  pleasant  weed.  | 

The  poetry  of  earth  is  ceasing  never  :  I 

On  a  lone  winter  evening,  when  the  frost  ; 

Has  wrought  a  silence,  from  the  stove  there  shrills  \ 

The  cricket's  song,  in  warmth  increasing  ever,  j 

And  seems  to  one  in  drowsiness  half  lost,  j 
The  grasshopper's  among  some  grassy  hills. 


154  -^  Treasury  of  \ 

ccciii  i 

John  Keats     TTAPPY  is  England  !     I  could  be  content  i 

1795— 1821  To  see  no  other  verdure  than  its  own  :  ! 

To  feel  no  other  breezes  than  are  blown  ■ 

! 
Through  its  tall  woods  with  high  romances  blent :  ■ 

Yet  do  I  sometimes  feel  a  languishment  \ 

For  skies  Italian,  and  an  inward  groan  ■        | 

To  sit  upon  an  Alp  as  on  a  throne,  | 

And  half  forget  what  world  or  worldling  meant.  j 

Happy  is  England  !  sweet  her  artless  daughters  ;  1 

Enough  their  simple  loveliness  for  me,  , 

ftiough  their  whitest  arms  in  silence  clinging  :  j 

Yet  do  I  often  warmly  burn  to  see  j 

Beauties  of  deeper  glance,  and  hear  their  singing, 

And  float  with  them  about  the  summer  waters. 


ccciv  ^ 

THE  HUMAN  SEASONS.  I 


IC'OUR  seasons  fill  the  measure  of  the  year  ; 

There  are  four  seasons  in  the  mind  of  man  : 
He  has  his  lusty  Spring,  when  fancy  clear 
Takes  in  all  beauty  with  an  easy  span  ; 
He  has  his  Summer,  when  luxuriously 
Spring's  honeyed  cud  of  youthful  thought  he  loves 
To  ruminate,  and  by  such  dreaming  high 
Is  nearest  unto  heaven  ;  quiet  coves 
His  soul  has  in  its  Autumn,  when  his  wings 
He  furleth  close  ;  contented  so  to  look 
On  mists  in  idleness — to  let  fair  things 
Pass  by  unheeded  as  a  threshold  brook. 
He  has  his  Winter,  too,  of  pale  misfeature. 
Or  else  he  would  forego  his  mortal  nature. 


ti 


English  Sonnets  155 

cccv 

TO  AILSA  ROCK. 

TTEARKEN,  thou  craggy  ocean-pyramid  !  John  Keats 

Give  answerby  thy  voice,the  sea-fowls' screams:       1795— 1821 
When  were  thy  shoulders  mantled  in  huge  streams  ? 
When  from  the  sun  was  thy  broad  forehead  hid  ? 
How  long  is't  since  the  mighty  Power  bid 
Thee  heave  to  airy  sleep  from  fathom  dreams — 
Sleep  in  the  lap  of  thunder  or  sunbeams, 
Or  when  grey  clouds  are  thy  cold  coverlid  ? 
Thou  answer'st  not ;  for  thou  art  dead  asleep. 
Thy  life  is  but  two  dead  eternities — 
The  last  in  air,  the  former  in  the  deep  ; 
First  with  the  whales,  last  with  the  eagle-skies  ! 
Drowned  wast  thou  till  an  earthquake  made  thee  steep; 
Another  cannot  wake  thy  giant-size  ! 


cccvi 

"\  TS /"HEN  I  have  fears  that  I  may  cease  to  be 

Before  my  pen  has  gleaned  my  teeming  brain,  | 

Before  high-piled  books,  in  charact'ry 
Hold  like  rich  garners  the  full-ripened  grain  ; 
When  I  behold,  upon  the  night's  starred  face, 

Huge  cloudy  symbols  of  a  high  romance,  ; 

And  think  that  I  may  never  live  to  trace  ' 

Their  shadows,  with  the  magic  hand  of  chance  ;  I 

And  when  I  feel,  fair  creature  of  an  hour  !  I 

That  I  shall  never  look  upon  thee  more,  j 

Never  have  relish  in  the  faery  power  -. 

Of  unreflecting  love  ! — then  on  the  shore  i 

Of  the  wide  world  I  stand  alone,  and  think  • 

Till  Love  and  Fame  to  nothingness  do  sink. 


156  A   Treasury  of 

CCCVII 

John  Keats      OLUE  !  'Tis  the  life  of  heaven, — the  domain 
1795— 1821        -L>'     Qf  Cynthia, — the  wide  palace  of  the  sun, — 
The  tent  of  Hesperus,  and  all  his  train, — 
The  bosomer  of  clouds,  gold,  grey  and  dun. 
Blue  !     'Tis  the  life  of  waters — ocean 
And  all  its  vassal  streams  :  pools  numberless 
May  rage,  and  foam,  and  fret,  but  never  can 
Subside,  if  not  to  dark-blue  nativeness. 
Blue  !  gentle  cousin  of  the  forest-green, 
Married  to  green  in  all  the  sweetest  flowers — 
Forget-me-not,  the  blue  bell,  and  that  queen 
Of  secrecy,  the  violet — what  strange  powers 
Hast  thou,  as  a  mere  shadow  !     But  how  great, 
When  in  an  Eye  thou  art  alive  with  fate  ! 


CCCVIII 
TO  SLEEP. 

(~\  SOFT  embalmer  of  the  still  midnight  ! 

^"^     Shutting,  with  careful  fingers  and  benign, 

Our  gloom-pleased  eyes,  embowered  from  the  light, 

Enshaded  in  forgetfulness  divine  : 

O  soothest  Sleep  !  if  so  it  please  thee,  close. 

In  midst  of  this  thine  hymn,  my  willing  eyes, 

Or  wait  the  amen,  ere  thy  poppy  throws 

Around  my  bed  its  lulling  charities  ; 

Then  save  me,  or  the  passed  day  will  shine 

Upon  my  pillow,  breeding  many  woes  ; 

Save  me  from  curious  conscience,  that  still  lords 

Its  strength,  for  darkness  burrowing  like  a  mole  ; 

Turn  the  key  deftly  in  the  oiled  wards, 

And  seal  the  hushed  casket  of  my  soul. 


English  Sonnets  157 

cccix 

TF  by  dull  rimes  our  English  must  be  chained,  John  Keats 

And,  like  Andromeda,  the  Sonnet  sweet  1795— 1821 

Fettered,  in  spite  of  pained  loveliness. 
Let  us  find  out,  if  we  must  be  constrained, 
Sandals  more  interwoven  and  complete 
To  fit  the  naked  foot  of  Poesy  ; 
Let  us  inspect  the  lyre,  and  weigh  the  stress 
Of  every  chord,  and  see  what  may  be  gained 
By  ear  industrious  and  attention  meet ; 
Misers  of  sound  and  syllable,  no  less 
Than  Midas  of  his  coinage,  let  us  be 
Jealous  of  dead  leaves  in  the  bay  wreath  crown  ; 
So,  if  we  may  not  let  the  Muse  be  free. 
She  will  be  bound  with  garlands  of  her  own. 


cccx 

'  I  ^HE  day  is  gone,  and  all  its  sweets  are  gone ! 

Sweet  voice,  sweet  lips,  soft  hand  and  softer  breast ; 
Warm  breath,  light  whisper,  tender  semi-tone, 
Bright  eyes,  accomplished  shape,  and  lang'rous  waist! 
Faded  the  flower  and  all  its  budded  charms. 
Faded  the  sight  of  beauty  from  my  eyes, 
Faded  the  shape  of  beauty  from  my  arms. 
Faded  the  voice,  warmth,  whiteness,  paradise — 
Vanished  unseasonably  at  shut  of  eve, 
When  the  dusk  holiday — or  holinight 
Of  fragrant-curtained  love  begins  to  weave 
The  woof  of  darkness  thick,  for  hid  delight. 
But,  as  I've  read  Love's  missal  through  to-day, 
He'll  let  me  sleep,  seeing  I  fast  and  pray. 


iS8 


A  Treasury  of 
cccxi 


John  Keats      T3RIGHT  Star  !  would  I  Were  steadfast  as  thou 
1795— 1821       -*-^         art, — 

Not  in  lone  splendour  hung  aloft  the  night, 
And  watching,  with  eternal  lids  apart, 
Like  Nature's  patient  sleepless  Eremite, 
The  moving  waters  at  their  priestlike  task 
Of  pure  ablution  round  earth's  human  shores, 
Or  gazing  on  the  new  soft-fallen  mask 
Of  snow  upon  the  mountains  and  the  moors  : — 
No — yet  still  steadfast,  still  unchangeable. 
Pillowed  upon  my  fair  Love's  ripening  breast, 
To  feel  for  ever  its  soft  swell  and  fall, 
Awake  for  ever  in  a  sweet  unrest ; 
Still,  still  to  hear  her  tender-taken  breath, 
And  so  live  ever, — or  else  swoon  to  death. 


William 
Sidney  Walker 

1795— 1846 


CCCXII 

TTHEY  say  that  thou  wert  lovely  on  thy  bier, 

More  lovely  than  in  life  ;  that  when  the  thrall 
Of  earth  was  loosed,  it  seemed  as  though  a  pall 
Of  years  were  lifted,  and  thou  didst  appear, 
Such  as  of  old  amidst  thy  home's  calm  sphere 
Thou  sat'st,  a  kindly  Presence  felt  by  all 
In  joy  or  grief,  from  morn  to  evening-fall. 
The  peaceful  Genius  of  that  mansion  dear. 
Was  it  the  craft  of  all-persuading  Love 
That  wrought  this  marvel  ?  or  is  Death  indeed 
A  mighty  master,  gifted  from  above 
With  alchemy  benign,  to  wounded  hearts 
Minist'ring  thus,  by  quaint  and  subtle  arts. 
Strange  comfort,  whereon  after-thought  may  feed  ? 


English  Sotinets  159 

CCCXIII 

TO    THE   SOUTH  AMERICAN  PATRIOTS, 

om  the  dispersion  of  the  late  expedition  from  spain  :    apkil,  181q. 

Thomas  Nooh 

"D  EJOICE,  ye  heroes  I     Freedom's  old  ally,  — 

Unchanging  Nature,  who  hath  seen  the  powers       ^^^^    '  ^* 
Of  thousand  tyrannies  decline  like  flowers. 
Your  triumph  aids  with  eldest  sympathy  : — 
The  breeze  hath  swept  again  the  stormy  sky 
That  wooed  Athenian  waves  with  tenderest  kiss 
And  breathed,  in  glorious  rage,  o'er  Salamis  ! 
Leaguing  with  deathless  chiefs,  whose  spirits  high 
Shared  in  its  freedom — now,  from  long  repose 
It  wakes  to  dash  unmastered  Ocean's  foam 
O'er  the  proud  navies  of  your  tyrant  foes  ; 
Nor  shall  it  cease  in  ancient  might  to  roam, 
Till  it  hath  borne  your  contest's  glorious  close 
To  every  breast  where  freedom  finds  a  home. 


cccxiv 
ON   THE  DEATH  OF  QUEEN  CAROLINE. 

"X  "^ /"HO  shall  lament  to  know  thy  aching  head 

Hath  found  its  pillow  ? — that  in  long  repose 
Great  Death,  the  noblest  of  thy  kingly  foes. 
Hath  laid  thee,  and,  with  sacred  veil  outspread, 
Guards  thee  from  basest  insults  ?     Thou  hast  led 
A  solitary  course, — among  the  great 
A  regal  hermitress,  despoiled  of  state, 
Or  mocked  and  fretted  by  one  tattered  shred 
Of  melancholy  grandeur  :  thou  didst  wed 
Only  to  be  more  mournfully  alone  ! 
But  now,  thy  sad  regalities  o'erthrown. 
No  more  an  alien  from  the  common  fate. 
Thou  hast  one  human  blessing  for  thine  own — 
A  place  of  rest  in  Nature's  kindliest  bed. 


i6o  A  Treasury  of 


cccxv 
TO     CHARLES   DICKENS, 

ON    HIS    ''OLIVER   TWIST." 


Thomas  Noon 
Talfourd 


IVrOT  only  with  the  Author's  happiest  praise 

^  ^     Thy  work  should.be  rewarded  :  'tis  akin 

1795— I  54       rp^  Deeds  of  men  who,  scorning  ease  to  win 
A  blessing  for  the  wretched,  pierce  the  maze 
Which  heedless  ages  spread  around  the  ways 
Where  fruitful  Sorrow  tracks  its  parent  Sin  ; 
Content  to  listen  to  the  wildest  din 
Of  passion,  and  on  fellest  shapes  to  gaze, 
So  they  may  earn  the  power  which  intercedes 
With  the  bright  world  and  melts  it ;  for  within 
Wan  Childhood's  squalid  haunts,  where  basest  needs 
Make  tyranny  more  bitter,  at  thy  call 
An  angel  face  with  patient  sweetness  pleads 
For  infant  suffering  to  the  heart  of  all. 


cccxvi  i 


THE  MEMORY  OF  THE  POETS. 

'T^HE  fame  of  those  pure  bards  whose  fancies  lie 

Like  glorious  clouds  in  summer's  calmest  even, 
Fringing  the  western  skirts  of  darkening  heaven. 
And  sprinkled  o'er  with  hues  of  rainbow  dye, 
Awakes  no  voice  of  thunder,  which  may  vie 
With  mighty  chiefs'  renown  ; — from  ages  gone, 
In  low  undying  strain  it  lengthens  on. 
Earth's  greenest  solitudes  with  joy  to  fill, — 
Felt  breathing  in  the  silence  of  the  sky. 
Or  trembling  in  the  gush  of  new-born  rill, 
Or  whispering  o'er  the  lake's  undimpled  breast ; 
Yet  blest  to  live  when  trumpet  notes  are  still, 
To  wake  a  pulse  of  earth -bom  ecstasy 
In  the  deep  bosom  of  eternal  rest. 


English  Sonnets  i6i 


CCCXVII 
TO  A  FRIEND. 


WHEN  we  were  idlers  with  the  loitering  rills,  Hartley 

Coleridge 
The  need  of  human  love  we  little  noted  :  — 

1796 — 1849 
Our  love  was  nature  ;  and  the  peace  that  floated 

On  the  white  mist,  and  dwelt  upon  the  hills, 

To  sweet  accord  subdued  our  wayward  wills  : 

One  soul  was  ours,  one  mind,  one  heart  devoted, 

That,  wisely  doating,  asked  not  why  it  doated, 

And  ours  the  unknown  joy,  which  knowing  kills. 

But  now  I  find  how  dear  thou  wert  to  me  ; 

That  man  is  more  than  half  of  nature's  treasure, 

Of  that  fair  beauty  which  no  eye  can  see,  • 

Of  that  sweet  music  which  no  ear  can  measure  ; 

And  now  the  streams  may  sing  for  others'  pleasure, 

The  hills  sleep  on  in  their  eternity. 


CCCXVIII 

'\ 'J^  7"HAT  was  't  awakened  first  the  untried  ear 

Of  that  sole  man  who  was  all  human  kind  ? — 
Was  it  the  gladsome  welcome  of  the  wind, 
Stirring  the  leaves  that  never  yet  were  sere  ? 
The  four  mellifluous  streams  which  flowed  so  near, 
Their  lulling  murmurs  all  in  one  combined  ? 
The  note  of  bird  unnamed  ?     The  startled  hind 
Bursting  the  brake — in  wonder,  not  in  fear, 
Of  her  new  lord  ?     Or  did  the  holy  ground 
Send  forth  mysterious  melody  to  greet 
The  gracious  pressure  of  immaculate  feet  ? 
Did  viewless  seraphs  rustle  all  around, 
Making  sweet  music  out  of  air  as  sweet  ? 
Or  his  own  voice  awake  him  with  its  sound  ? 


i62  A  Treasury  of  , 

•  ) 

CCCXIX  ] 

I 

I 
Tl^ /"HITHER  is  gone  the  wisdom  and  the  power  ' 

Hartley         *  *       That  ancient  sages  scattered  with  the  notes  ''' 

Coleridge         ^,    ,  ■         i  ->      mi  ■      r,  i 

—  Of  thought-suggesting  lyres  ?     The  music  floats  | 

In  the  void  air  ;  even  at  this  breathing  hour, 
In  every  cell  and  every  blooming  bower 
The  sweetness  of  old  lays  is  hovering  still ; 
But  the  strong  soul,  the  self-constraining  will, 
The  rugged  root  that  bare  the  winsome  flower 
Is  weak  and  withered.     Were  we  like  the  Fays 
That  sweetly  nestle  in  the  foxglove  bells, 
Or  lurk  and  murmur  in  the  rose- lipped  shells  i 

»  Which  Neptune  to  the  earth  for  quit-rent  pays,  ' 

Then  might  our  pretty  modern  Philomels 
Sustain  our  spirits  with  their  roundelays. 


cccxx 

T    ONG  time  a  child,  and  still  a  child,  when  years 
Had  painted  manhood  on  my  cheek,  was  I, — 
For  yet  I  lived  like  one  not  born  to  die  ; 
A  thriftless  prodigal  of  smiles  and  tears, 
No  hope  I  needed,  and  I  knew  no  fears. 
But  sleep,  though  sweet,  is  only  sleep  ;  and  waking, 
I  waked  to  sleep  no  more  ;  at  once  o'ertaking 
The  vanguard  of  my  age,  with  all  arrears 
Of  duty  on  my  back.     Nor  child,  nor  man, 
Nor  youth,  nor  sage,  I  find  my  head  is  gray, 
For  I  have  lost  the  race  I  never  ran  : 
A  rathe  December  blights  my  lagging  May  ; 
And  still  I  am  a  child,  though  I  be  old  : 
Time  is  my  debtor  for  my  years  untold. 


1796 — 1849  I 


English  Sonnets  163  .  : 

cccxxi  ' 

TOO  true  it  is  my  time  of  power  was  spent  Hartley  j 

_      .  ,,  .  Coleridge 

In  idly  waternig  weeds  of  casual  growth, 
That  wasted  energy  to  desperate  sloth 
Declined,  and  fond  self-seeking  discontent ; 
That  the  huge  debt  for  all  that  Nature  lent 
I  sought  to  cancel,  and  was  nothing  loth 
To  deem  myself  an  outlaw,  severed  both 
From  duty  and  from  hope, — yea,  JDlindly  sent 
Without  an  errand,  where  I  would  to  stray  :— 
Too  true  it  is  that,  knowing  now  my  state, 
I  weakly  mourn  the  sin  I  ought  to  hate, 
Nor  love  the  law  I  yet  would  fain  obey  : 
But  true  it  is,  above  all  law  and  fate 
Is  Faith,  abiding  the  appointed  day. 


CCCXXII 
NOVEMBER. 

npHE  mellow  year  is  hasting  to  its  close  ; 

The  little  birds  have  almost  sung  their  last, 
Their  small  notes  twitter  in  the  dreary  blast — 
That  shrill-piped  harbinger  of  early  snows  ; 
The  patient  beauty  of  the  scentless  rose. 
Oft  with  the  morn's  hoar  crystal  quaintly  glassed. 
Hangs,  a  pale  mourner  for  the  summer  past. 
And  make  a  little  summer  where  it  grows  : 
In  the  chill  sunbeam  of  the  faint  brief  day 
The  dusky  waters  shudder  as  they  shine. 
The  russet  leaves  obstruct  the  straggling  way 
Of  oozy  brooks,  which  no  deep  banks  define, 
And  the  gaunt  woods,  in  ragged  scant  array, 
Wrap  their  old  limbs  with  sombre  ivy  twine. 


Hartley 

Coleridge 


164  A  Treasury  of 

CCCXXIII 
NIGH  T. 


'T~'HE  crackling  embers  on  the  hearth  are  dead  ; 

- — .  The  indoor  note  of  industry  is  still ; 

1796 — 1849  _  ,     J  J 

The  latch  is  fast  ;  upon  the  window-sill 
The  small  birds  wait  not  for  their  daily  bread  ; 
The  voiceless  flowers — how  quietly  they  shed 
Their  nightly  odours  ; — and  the  household  rill 
Murmurs  continuous  dulcet  sounds  that  fill 
The  vacant  expectation,  and  the  dread 
Of  listening  night.     And  haply  noAV  She  sleeps  ; 
For  all  the  garrulous  noises  of  the  air 
t       Are  hushed  in  peace  ;  the  soft  dew  silent  weeps, 
Like  hopeless  lovers  for  a  maid  so  fair  ; — 
Oh  !  that  I  were  the  happy  dream  that  creeps 
To  her  soft  heart,  to  find  my  image  there. 


cccxxiv 


TF  I  have  sinned  in  act,  I  may  repent , 

If  I  have  erred  in  thought,  I  may  disclaim 
My  silent  error,  and  yet  feel  no  shame  ; 
But  if  my  soul,  big  with  an  ill  intent, 
Guilty  in  will,  by  fate  be  innocent. 
Or  being  bad,  yet  murmurs  at  the  curse 
And  incapacity  of  being  worse. 
That  makes  my  hungry  passion  still  keep  Lent 
In  keen  expectance  of  a  Carnival, — 
Where,  in  all  worlds  that  round  the  sun  revolve 
And  shed  their  influence  on  this  passive  ball. 
Abides  a  power  that  can  my  soul  absolve  ? 
Could  any  sin  survive  and  be  forgiven. 
One  sinful  wish  would  make  a  hell  of  heaven. 


English  Sounds  165 


cccxxv 
TO    SHAKSPEARE. 


n^HE  soul  of  man  is  larger  than  the  sky,  c^LElmcE 

-^      Deeper  than  ocean,  or  the  abysmal  dark  1796^849 

Of  the'unfathomed  centre.     Like  that  Ark, 
Which  in  its  sacred  hold  uplifted  high. 
O'er  the  drowned  hills,  the  human  family, 
And  stock  reserved  of  every  living  kind  ; 
So,  in  the  compass  of  the  single  mind. 
The  seeds  and  pregnant  forms  in  essence  lie 
That  make  all  worlds.     Great  poet,  'tAvas  thy  art 
To  know  thyself,  and  in  thyself  to  be 
Whate'er  love,  hate,  ambition,  destiny. 
Or  the  firm,  fatal  purpose  of  the  heart. 
Can  make  of  Man.     Yet  thou  wert  still  the  same, 
Serene  of  thought,  unhurt  by  thy  own  flame. 


cccxxvi 
TO  A  LOFTY  BE  A  UTY 

FROJI   HER    POOR   KINSMAN. 

17  AIR  maid,  had  I  not  heard  thy  baby  cries, 

Nor  seen  thy  girlish,  sweet  vicissitude, 
Thy  mazy  motions,  striving  to  elude, 
Yet  wooing  still  a  parent's  watchful  eyes. 
Thy  humours,  many  as  the  opal's  dyes, 
And  lovely  all ; — methinks  thy  scornful  mood, 
And  bearing  high  of  stately  womanhood, — 
Thy  brow,  where  Beauty  sits  to  tyrannize 
O'er  humble  love,  had  made  me  sadly  fear  thee  ; 
For  never  sure  was  seen  a  royal  bride 
Whose  gentleness  gave  grace  to  so  much  pride, — 
My  very  thoughts  would  tremble  to  be  near  thee  ; 
But  when  I  see  thee  at  thy  father's  side, 
Old  times  unqueen  thee,  and  old  loves  endear  thee. 


1796 — 1849 


1 66  A    Treasury  of 

CCCXXVIII 


Coleridge         ^^ 


Hartley        /^^OULD  I  but  harmonize  one  kindly  thought, 
Fix  one  fair  image  in  a  snatch  of  song, 
Which  maids  might  warble  as  they  tripped  along'; 
Or  could  I  ease  the  labouring  heart,  o'erfraught 
With  passionate  truths  for  which  the  mind  untaught 
Lacks  form  and  utterance,  with  a  single  line  ; 
Might  rustic  lovers  woo  in  phrase  of  mine", 
I  should  not  deem  that  I  had  lived  for  nought. 
The  world  were  welcome  to  forget  my  name. 
Could  I  bequeath  a  few  remembered  words- 
Like  his,  the  bard  that  never  dreamed  of  fame, 
Whose  rimes  preserve  from  harm  the  pious  birds  ; 
Or  his,  that  dim  full  many  a  star-bright  eye 
With  woe  for  Barbara  Allen's  cruelty. 


CCCXXVIII 

T    ET  me  not  deem  that  I  was  made  in  vain, 
^-^     Or  that  my  being  was  an  accident 
Which  Fate,  in  working  its  sublime  intent, 
Not  wished  to  be,  to  hinder  would  not  deign. 
Each  drop  uncounted  in  a  storm  of  rain 
Hath  its  own  mission,  and  is  duly  sent 
To  its  own  leaf  or  blade,  not  idly  spent 
'Mid  myriad  dimples  on  the  shipless  main. 
The  very  shadow  of  an  insect's  wing, 
For  which  the  violet  cared  not  while  it  stayed, 
Yet  felt  the  lighter  for  its  vanishing. 
Proved  that  the  sun  was  shining  by  its  shade. 
Then  can  a  drop  of  the  eternal  spring. 
Shadow  of  living  lights,  in  vain  be  made  ? 


English  Sonnets  167 


CCCXXIX 

HOMER. 

TIJ^AR  from  the  sight  of  earth,  yet  bright  and  plain      c^LEKm^E 

As  the  clear  noon-day  sun,  an  '  orb  of  song '  ^   — g 

Lovely  and  bright  is  seen  amid  the  throng 
Of  lesser  stars,  that  rise,  and  wax,  and  wane, 
The  transient  rulers  of  the  fickle  main  ; 
One  constant  light  gleams  through  the  dark  and  long 
And  narrow  aisle  of  memory.     How  strong, 
How  fortified  with  all  the  numerous  train 
Of  truths  wert  thou,  great  poet  of  mankind, 
Who  told'st  in  verse  as  mighty  as  the  sea, 
And  various  as  the  voices  of  the  wind, 
The  strength  of  passion  rising  in  the  glee 
Of  battle.     Fear  was  glorified  by  thee, 
And  Death  is  lovely  in  thy  tale  enshrined. 


cccxxx 

TO  MISS  MARTHA   H- 


\J\  ARTHA,  thy  maiden  foot  is  still  so  light, 

It  leaves  no  legible  trace  on  virgin  snows, 
And  yet  I  ween  that  busily  it  goes 
In  duty's  path  from  happy  morn  to  night. 
Thy  dimpled  cheek  is  gay,  and  softly  bright 
As  the  fixed  beauty  of  the  mossy  rose  ; 
Yet  will  it  change  its  hue  for  others'  woes, 
And  native  red  contend  with  piteous  white. 
Thou  bear'st  a  name  by  Jesus  known  and  loved, 
And  Jesus  gently  did  the  maid  reprove 
For  too  much  haste  to  show  her  eager  love. 
But  blest  is  she  that  may  be  so  reproved. 
Be  Martha  still  in  deed  and  good  endeavour, 
In  faith  like  Mary,  at  his  feet  for  ever. 


Coleridge 
1796 — I 


168  A  Treasury  of 


cccxxxi 
PR  A  YER. 


Hartley       HPHERE  is  an  awful  quict  in  the  air, 


And  the  sad  earth,  with  moist  imploring  eye, 
Looks  wide  and  wakeful  at  the  pondering  sky, 
Like  Patience  slow  subsiding  to  Despair. 
But  see,  the  blue  smoke  as  a  voiceless  prayer, 
Sole  witness  of  a  secret  sacrifice. 
Unfolds  its  tardy  wreaths,  and  multiplies 
Its  soft  chameleon  breathings  in  the  rare 
Capacious  ether, — so  it  fades  away. 
And  nought  is  seen  beneath  the  pendent  blue, 
The  undistinguishable  waste  of  day. 
So  have  I  dreamed  ! — oh,  may  the  dream  be  true  ! — 
That  praying  souls  are  purged  from  mortal  hue. 
And  grow  as  pure  as  He  to  whom  they  pray. 


cccxxxii  ^ 

P  RA  YER. 

T)  E  not  afraid  to  pray — to  pray  is  right. 

Pray,  if  thou  canst,  with  hope  ;  but  ever  pray,         ) 
Though  hope  be  weak,  or  sick  with  long  delay ; 

Pray  in  the  darkness,  if  there  be  no  light.  1 

Far  is  the  time,  remote  from  human  sight,  j 

When  war  and  discord  on  the  earth  shall  cease  ;  ] 

Yet  every  prayer  for  universal  peace  j 

Avails  the  blessed  time  to  expedite.  j 

Whate'er  is  good  to  wish,  ask  that  of  Heaven,  ; 

Though  it  be  what  thou  canst  not  hope  to  see  :  ; 

Pray  to  be  perfect,  though  material  leaven  \ 
Forbid  the  spirit  so  on  earth  to  be  ; 

But  if  for  any  wish  thou  darest  not  pray,  : 

Then  pray  to  God  to  cast  that  wish  away.  ; 


English   Sonnets  169 


CCCXXXIII 

SEPTEMBER. 


T 


Coleridge 
1796 — 1849 


'HE  dark  green  Summer,  with  its  massive  hues,         ^Hartley 
Fades  into  Autumn's  tincture  manifold  ; 
A  gorgeous  garniture  of  fire  and  gold 
The  high  slope  of  the  ferny  hill  indues  ; 
The  mists  of  morn  in  slumbering  layers  diffuse 
O'er  glimmering  rock,  smooth  lake,  and  spiked  array 
Of  hedgerow  thorns,  a  unity  of  gray  ; 
All  things  appear  their  tangible  form  to  lose 
In  ghostly  vastness.     But  anon  the  gloom 
Melts,  as  the  Sun  puts  off  his  muddy  veil ; 
And  now  the  birds  their  twittering  songs  resume, 
All  Summer  silent  in  the  leafy  dale. 
In  Spring  they  piped  of  love  on  every  tree. 
But  now  they  sing  the  song  of  memory. 


cccxxxiv 
'  MULTUM  DILEXIT: 

OHE  sat  and  wept  beside  His  feet ;  the  weight 

Of  sin  oppressed  her  heart ;  for  all  the  blame, 
And  the  poor  malice  of  the  worldly  shame. 
To  her  was  past,  extinct,  and  out  of  date  : 
Only  the  sin  remained, — the  leprous  state  ; 
She  would  be  melted  by  the  heat  of  love. 
By  fires  far  fiercer  than  are  blown  to  prove 
And  purge  the  silver  ore  adulterate. 
She  sat  and  wept,  and  with  her  untressed  hair 
Still  wiped  the  feet  she  was  so  blest  to  touch  ; 
And  He  wiped  off  the  soiling  of  despair 
From  her  sweet  soul,  because  she  loved  so  much. 
I  am  a  sinner,  full  of  doubts  and  fears  : 
Make  me  a  humble  thing  of  love  and  tears. 


lyo 


Charles 
Johnston 

Died  1823 


A  Treasury  of 
cccxxxv 


nPHERE  is  a  virtue  which  to  fortune's  height 

Follows  us  not,  but  in  the  vale  below, 
Where  dwell  the  ills  of  life,  disease  and  woe, 
Holds  on  its  steady  course,  serenely  bright  : 
So  some  lone  star,  whose  softly-beaming  light 
We  mark  not  in  the  blaze  of  solar  day. 
Comes  forth  with  pure  and  ever-constant  ray, 
That  makes  even  beautiful  the  gloom  of  night. 
Thou  art  that  star,  so  beauteous  and  so  lone, 
That  virtue  of  distress.  Fidelity  ! 
And  thou,  when  every  joy  and  hope  is  flown, 
Cling'st  to  the  relics  of  humanity  ; 
Making  with  all  its  sorrows  life  still  dear, 
And  death,  with  all  its  terrors,  void  of  fear. 


Thomas  Hood 
1798—1845 


CCCXXXVI 
WRITTEN  IN  A    VOLUME  OF  SHAKSPEARE. 

TLTOW  bravely  Autumn  paints  upon  the  sky 

The  gorgeous  fame  of  Summer  which  is  fled  ! 
Hues  of  all  flowers  that  in  their  ashes  lie, 
Trophied  in  that  fair  light  whereon  they  fed, 
Tulip,  and  hyacinth,  and  sweet  rose  red, — 
Like  exhalations  from  the  leafy  mould. 
Look  here  how  honour  glorifies  the  dead, 
And  warms  their  scutcheons  with  a  glance  of  gold  ! 
Such  is  the  memory  of  poets  old. 
Who  on  Parnassus  hill  have  bloomed  elate  ; 
Now  they  are  laid  under  their  marbles  cold. 
And  turned  to  clay,  whereof  they  were  create  ; 
But  god  Apollo  hath  them  all  enrolled, 
And  blazoned  on  the  very  clouds  of  fate. 


English  Sonnets  171 

CCCXJCXVII 

TO  A    SLEEPING   CHILD. 

/~\H,  'tis  a  touching  thing,  to  make  one  weep, —        Thomas  Hood 

^-^     A  tender  infant,  with  its  curtained  eye,  1798—1843 

Breathing  as  it  would  neither  Hve  nor  die 

With  that  unchanging  countenance  of  sleep  ! 

As  if  its  silent  dream,  serene  and  deep. 

Had  lined  its  slumber  with  a  still  blue  sky, 

So  that  the  passive  cheeks  unconscious  lie 

With  no  more  life  than  roses — just  to  keep 

The  blushes  warm,  and  the  mild,  odorous  breath. 

O  blossom  boy  !  so  calm  is  thy  repose. 

So  sweet  a  compromise  of  life  and  death, 

'Tis  pity  those  fair  buds  should  e'er  unclose 

For  memory  to  stain  their  inward  leaf. 

Tinging  thy  dreams  with  unacquainted  grief. 


CCCXXXVIII 
TO  AN  ENTHUSIAST. 

"VT'OUNG  ardent  soul,  graced  with  fair  Nature's  truth, 

Spring  warmth  of  heart,  and  fervency  of  mind, 
And  still  a  large  late  love  of  all  thy  kind. 
Spite  of  the  world's  cold  practice  and  Time's  tooth, — 
For  all  these  gifts  I  know  not,  in  fair  sooth, 
Whether  to  give  thee  joy,  or  bid  thee  blind 
Thine  eyes  with  tears, — that  thou  hast  not  resigned 
The  passionate  fire  and  fierceness  of  thy  youth : 
For  as  the  current  of  thy  life  shall  flow. 
Gilded  by  shine  of  sun  or  shadow-stained. 
Through  flowery  valley  or  unwholesome  fen, 
Thrice  blessed  in  thy  joy,  or  in  thy  woe 
Thrice  cursed  of  thy  race,  thou  art  ordained 
To  share  beyond  the  lot  of  common  men. 


172  A   Treasitry  of 

cccxxxix 


Thomas  Hood 


TT  is  not  death,  that  sometime  in  a  sigh 
1798— 184s        J-     -pi^jg  eloquent  breath  shall  take  its  speechless 
flight ; 
That  sometime  these  bright  stars,  that  now  reply 
In  sunlight  to  the  sun,  shall  set  in  night ; 
That  this  warm  conscious  flesh  shall  perish  quite, 
And  all  life's  ruddy  springs  forget  to  flow  ; 
That  thoughts  shall  cease,  and  the  immortal  sprite 
Be  lapped  in  alien  clay  and  laid  below  ; 
It  is  not  death  to  know  this, — but  to  know 
That  pious  thoughts,  which  visit  at  new  graves 
In  tender  pilgrimage,  will  cease  to  go 
So  duly  and  so  oft, — and  when  grass  waves 
Over  the  past-away,  there  may  be  then 
No  resurrection  in  the  minds  of  men. 


CCCXL 

SILENCE. 

''  I  ""HERE  is  a  silence  where  hath  been  no  sound, 

There  is  a  silence  where  no  sound  may  be. 
In  the  cold  grave — under  the  deep  deep  sea, 
Or  in  wide  desert  where  no  life  is  found. 
Which  hath  been  mute,  and  still  must  sleep  profound; 
No  voice  is  hushed — no  life  treads  silently, 
But  clouds  and  cloudy  shadows  wander  free, 
That  never  spoke,  over  the  idle  ground  : 
But  in  green  ruins,  in  the  desolate  walls 
Of  antique  palaces,  where  Man  hath  been, 
Though  the  dun  fox,  or  wild  hyena,  calls. 
And  owls,  that  flit  continually  between, 
Shriek  to  the  echo,  and  the  low  winds  moan, 
There  the  true  Silence  is,  self-conscious  and  alone. 


English  Sonnets  173 

CCCXLI 

T    OVE,  dearest  lady,  such  as  I  would  speak,  Thomas  Hood 

"^     Lives  not  within  the  humour  of  the  eye,  1798—1845 

Not  being  but  an  outward  phantasy, 

That  skims  the  surface  of  a  tinted  cheek  ; 

Else  it  would  wane  with  beauty,  and  grow  weak — 

As  if  the  rose  made  summer — and  so  lie 

Amongst  the  perishable  things  that  die. 

Unlike  the  love  which  I  would  give  and  seek  : 

Whose  health  is  of  no  hue — to  feel  decay 

With  cheeks'  decay,  that  have  a  rosy  prime. 

Love  is  its  own  great  loveliness  alway. 

And  takes  new  lustre  from  the  touch  of  time  ; 

Its  bough  owns  no  December  and  no  May, 

But  bears  its  blossom  into  Winter's  clime.  • 


CCCXLII  ] 

'  I  ^HE  hand  of  Death  lay  heavy  on  her  eyes, —         John  Moultrie 

For  weeks  and  weeks  her  vision  had  not  borne       1799— 1874 
To  meet  the  tenderest  light  of  eve  or  morn. 

To  see  the  crescent  moonbeam  set  or  rise,  ■; 

Or  palest  twilight  creep  across  the  skies  : 
She  lay  in  darkness,  seemingly  forlorn, 
With  sharp  and  ceaseless  anguish  racked  and  torn, 
Yet  calm  with  that  one  peace  which  never  dies.  ' 

Closed  was  for  her  the  gate  of  visual  sense, 

This  world  and  all  its  beauty  lost  in  night  ;  : 

But  the  pure  soul  was  all  ablaze  with  light, 

And  through  that  gloom  she  saw,  with  gaze  intense,  \ 

Celestial  glories,  hid  from  fleshly  sight,  1 

And  heard  angelic  voices  call  her  hence.  j 


174 


A  Treasury  of 


CCCXLIII 


TOWNSHEND 
1800 — l£ 


'"t\™k^L^^''^   /'^IVE  me  thy  joy  in  sorrow,  gracious  Lord, 

^^     And  sorrow's  self  shall  like  to  joy  appear  ! 
Although  the  world  should  waver  in  its  sphere 
I  tremble  not  if  Thou  thy  peace  afford  ; 
But,  Thou  withdrawn,  I  am  but  as  a  chord 
That  vibrates  to  the  pulse  of  hope  and  fear  : 
Nor  rest  I  more  than  harps  which  to  the  air 
Must  answer  when  we  place  their  tuneful  board 
Against  the  blast,  which  thrill  unmeaning  woe 
Even  in  their  sweetness.     So  no  earthly  wing 
E'er  sweeps  me  but  to  sadden.     Oh,  place  Thou 
My  heart  beyond  the  world's  sad  vibrating — 
And  where  but  in  Thyself  ?     Oh,  circle  me, 
That  I  may  feel  no  touches  save  of  Thee. 


CCCXLIV 


Isaac  Williams 
1802—1865 


ORIGEN. 

(ON   READING   HIS   COMMENTARIES   ON   SCRIPTURE.) 

TNTO  God's  word,  as  in  a  palace  fair,    • 

Thou  leadest  on  and  on,  while  still  beyond 
Each  chamber,  touched  by  holy  wisdom's  wand, 
Another  opes,  more  beautiful  and  rare  ; 
And  thou  in  each  art  kneeling  down  in  prayer, 
From  link  to  link  of  that  mysterious  bond 
Seeking  for  Christ  :  but  oh,  I  fear  thy  fond 
And  beautiful  torch,  that  with  so  bright  a  glare 
Lighteth  up  all  things,  lest  the  heaven-lit  brand 
Of  thy  serene  Philosophy  divine 
Should  take  the  colourings  of  earthly  thought, 
And  I,  by  their  sweet  images  o'er-wrought, 
Led  by  weak  Fancy  should  let  go  Truth's  hand 
And  miss  the  way  into  the  inner  shrine. 


English  Sontiets  i75 

CCCXLV 

TTEED  not  a  \\ox\d  that  neither  thee  can  keep,        Isaac  Williams 

■"^     Nor  vestige  of  thee,  whatsoe'er  thy  lot —  1S02-1865 

Of  thee  or  thine,  nor  mark  when  thou  art  not. 

No  more  ! — engulfed  within  the  sounding  deep, 

Faint  and  more  faint  the  billowy  circles  sweep, 

And  trembling  own  the  shock  ;  then  'tis  forgot : 

The  leaf's  still  image  anchors  on  the  spot, 

The  wave  is  in  its  noonday  couch  asleep. 

We  marked  the  eddying  whirlpools  close  around 

Where  he  had  been  ;  but  who  the  path  profound — 

What  thought  can  follow  'neath  the  watery  floor, 

'Mid  sights  of  strangeness  and  untravelled  caves, 

Ocean's  wild  deeps  of  ever-moving  waves, 

A  boundless,  new  horizon  spreading  round  ? 


1 

CCCXLVI  < 


nPHE  good — they  drop  around  us,  one  by  one, 
■^       Like  stars  when  morning  breaks  ;  though  lost 

to  sight, 
Around  us  are  they  still  in  Heaven's  own  light, 
Building  their  mansions  in  the  purer  zone 
Of  the  invisible  :  when  round  are  thrown 
Shadows  of  sorrow,  still  serenely  bright 
To  faith  they  gleam  ;  and  blest  be  sorrow's  night 
That  brings  the  o'er-arching  heavens  in  silence  down, 
A  mantle  set  with  orbs  unearthly  fair  ! 
Alas  !  to  us  they  are  not,  though  they  dwell, 
Divinely  well  in  memory  ;  while  life's  sun 
Declining,  bids  us  for  the  night  prepare  ; 
That  we,  with  urns  of  light,  and  our  task  done, 
May  stand  with  them  in  lot  unchangeable. 


176 


A  Treasury  of 


Thomas 

I.OVELL 

Beddoes 
1803 — 1849 


CCCXLVII 
TO  TARTAR,  A   TERRIER  BEAUTY. 

SNOW-DROP  of  dogs,  with  ear  of  brownest  dye, 
Like  the  last  orphan  leaf  of  naked  tree 
Which  shudders  in  bleak  autumn  ;  though  by  thee, 
Of  hearing  careless  and  untutored  eye. 
Not  understood  articulate  speech  of  men, 
Nor  marked  the  artificial  mind  of  books — 
The  mortal's  voice  eternized  by  the  pen — 
Yet  hast  thou  thought  and  language  all  unknown 
To  Babel's  scholars  ;  oft  intensest  looks, 
Long  scrutiny  o'er  some  dark- veined  stone 
Dost  thou  bestow,  learning  dead  mysteries 
Of  the  world's  birth-day  ;  oft  in  eager  tone 
With  quick-tailed  fellows  handiest  prompt  replies, 
Solicitudes  canine,  four-footed  amities. 


Samuel 

Laman 

Blanchard 

1804— 1845 


CCCXLVIII 
WISHES  OF  YOUTH. 

r^KlLY  and  greenly  let  my  seasons  run  : 

^-^     And  should  the  war-winds  of  the  world  uproot 

The  sanctities  of  life,  and  its  sweet  fruit 

Cast  forth  as  fuel  for  the  fiery  sun  ; 

The  dews  be  turned  to  ice— fair  days  begun 

In  peace  wear  out  in  pain,  and  sounds  that  suit 

Despair  and  discord  keep  Hope's  harpstring  mute  ; 

Still  let  me  live  as  Love  and  Life  were  one  : 

Still  let  me  turn  on  earth  a  childlike  gaze 

And  trust  the  whispered  charities  that  bring 

Tidings  of  human  truth  ;  with  inward  praise 

Watch  the  weak  motion  of  each  common  thing 

And  find  it  glorious— still  let  me  raise 

On  wintry  wrecks  an  altar  to  the  Spring. 


English  Sonnets  177 

CCCXLIX 
HIDDEN  JOYS. 

PLEASURES  lie  thickest  where  no  pleasures  seem;        Samuel 
,  ■  Laman 

There  s  not  a  leaf  that  falls  upon  the  ground         Blanchard 

But  holds  some  joy,  of  silence  or  of  sound,  1804— 1845 

Some  sprite  begotten  of  a  summer  dream. 

The  very  meanest  things  are  made  supreme 

With  innate  ecstasy.     No  grain  of  sand 

But  moves  a  bright  and  million-peopled  land, 

And  hath  its  Edens  and  its  Eves,  I  deem. 

For  Love,  though  blind  himself,  a  curious  eye 

Hath  lent  me,  to  behold  the  hearts  of  things, 

And  touched  mine  ear  with  power.  Thus,  far  or  nigh, 

Minute  or  mighty,  fixed  or  free  with  wings. 

Delight  from  many  a  nameless  covert  sly 

Peeps  sparkling,  and  in  tones  familiar  sings. 


CCCL 
DELIGHT  NOT  DISTANT. 

A  ROUND  man's  hearth  his  dearest  blessings  meet 
Why  look  we  for  a  fruit  that  grows  afar 
Planted  in  peril,  when  free  pastures  are. 
Like  promises,  spread  round  our  calm  retreat  ? 
Man  flies  the  land  to  range  where  billows  beat, 
Forsakes  his  hut  to  track  the  conqueror's  car  ; 
Yet  he  whose  eyes  but  watch  some  wandering  star 
May  crush  the  steadier  glowworm  at  his  feet. 
And  thus  who  idly  grasp  a  doubtful  good, 
In  thoughts  obscure  and  passions  wild  and  vain, 
Neglect  the  native  pleasures  of  the  blood. 
And  turn  its  health  and  hopes  to  present  pain  ; 
Missing,  for  gems  deep  fixed  within  the  flood, 
The  readier  riches  of  the  fragrant  plaia 

M 


178  A  Treasury  of 


CCCLI 
'  PATER   VESTER  PASCIT  ILLA: 

Robert         /^UR  bark  is  on  the  waters  !  Avide  around  ■ 

Stephen  V^  , 

Hawker        ^-^      The  wandcrmg  wave  ;  above,  the  lonely  sky  : 
1804— 187s       Hush  !  a  young  sea-bird  floats,  and  that  quick  cry 
Shrieks  to  the  levelled  weapon's  echoing  sound  : 
Grasp  its  lank  wing,  and  on,  with  reckless  bound  ! 
Yet,  creature  of  the  surf,  a  sheltering  breast 
To-night  shall  haunt  in  vain  thy  far-off  nest, 
A  call  unanswered  search  the  rocky  ground. 
Lord  of  leviathan  !  when  Ocean  heard 
Thy  gathering  voice,  and  sought  his  native  breeze  ; 
When  whales  first  plunged  with  life,  and  the  proud 

deep 
Felt  unborn  tempests  heave  in  troubled  sleep, 
Thou  didst  provide,  even  for  this  nameless  bird, 
Home  and  a  natural  love  amid  the  surging  seas. 

CCCLII 
THE     VINE. 

T  T  EARKEN  I  there  is  in  old  Morwenna's  shrine, 

A  lonely  sanctuary  of  the  Saxon  days 
Reared  by  the  Severn  sea  for  prayer  and  praise, 
Amid  the  carved  work  of  the  roof,  a  vine. 
Its  root  is  where  the  eastern  sunbeams  fall 
First  in  the  chancel  ;  then  along  the  wall 
Slowly  it  travels  on,  a  leafy  line. 
With  here  and  there  a  cluster,  and  anon 
More  and  more  grapes,  until  the  growth  hath  gone 
Through  arch  and  aisle.  Hearken  !  and  heed  the  sign  : 
See  at  the  altar-side  the  steadfast  root, 
Mark  well  the  branches,  count  the  summer  fruit ; 
So  let  a  meek  and  faithful  heart  be  thine, 
And  gather  from  that  tree  a  parable  divine. 


English  Sonnets  179 

CCCLIII 
THE     TWAIN. 

'T^WO  sunny  children  wandered,  hand  in  hand,  Itephe^ 

''■       By  the  blue  waves  of  far  Gennesaret,  Hawker 

For  there  their  Syrian  father  drew  the  net,  1804-1875 

With  multitudes  of  fishes,  to  the  land. 
One  was  the  Twin,  even  he  whose  blessed  name 
Hath  in  ten  thousand  shrines  this  day  a  fame — 
Thomas  the  Apostle,  one  of  the  ethereal  band  ; 
But  he,  his  Hebrew  brother,  who  can  trace 
His  name,  the  city  where  he  dwelt,  his  place. 
Or  grave  ?    We  know  not,  none  may  understand. 
There  were  two  brethren  in  the  field  :  the  one 
Shall  have  no  memory  underneath  the  sun  ; 
The  other  shines,  beacon  of  many  a  strand, 
A  star  upon  the  brow  of  night,  here  in  the  rocky  land. 


CCCLIV 

THE   WELL  OF  ST.  JOHN. 

HTHEY  dreamed  not  in  old  Hebron,  when  the  sound 
-*■       Went  through  the  city  that  the  promised  son 
Was  born  to  Zachary,  and  his  name  was  John, — 
They  little  thought  that  here,  in  this  far  ground 
Beside  the  Severn  sea,  that  Hebrew  child 
Would  be  a  cherished  memory  of  the  wild  ; 
Here,  where  the  pulses  of  the  ocean  bound 
Whole  centuries  away,  while  one  meek  cell. 
Built  by  the  fathers  o'er  a  lonely  well. 
Still  breathes  the  Baptist's  sweet  remembrance  round. 
A  spring  of  silent  waters,  with  his  name 
That  from  the  angel's  voice  in  music  came. 
Here  in  the  wilderness  so  faithful  found. 
It  freshens  to  this  day  the  Levite's  grassy  mound. 


i8o  A  Treasury  of 


CCCLV 
A     PRAYER. 

Sir  William      /^  BROODING  Spirit  of  Wisdom  and  of  Love, 
Hamilton       ^^     Whose  mighty  wings  even  now  o'ershadow  me, 
180^865       Absorb  me  in  thine  own  immensity, 

And  raise  me  far  my  finite  self  above  ! 

Purge  vanity  away,  and  the  weak  care 

That  name  or  fame  of  me  may  widely  spread  ; 

And  the  deep  wish  keep  burning  in  their  stead, 

Thy  blissful  influence  afar  to  bear, — 

Or  see  it  borne  !     Let  no  desire  of  ease. 

No  lack  of  courage,  faith,  or  love,  delay 

Mine  own  steps  on  that  high  thought-paven  way 

In  which  my  soul  her  clear  commission  sees  : 

Yet  with  an  equal  joy  let  me  behold 

Thy  chariot  o'er  that  way  by  others  rolled  ! 


CCCLVI 
TO  ADAMS, 

DISCOVERER  OF  THE  PLANET    NEPTUNE. 

■\  "^  yTHEN  Vulcan  cleft  the  labouring  brain  of  Jove 
^  ^      With  his  keen  axe,  and  set  Minerva  free, 
The  unimprisoned  maid,  exultingly. 
Bounded  aloft,  and  to  the  Heaven  above 
Turned  her  clear  eyes,  while  the  grim  workman  strove 
To  claim  the  virgin  Wisdom  for  his  fee. 
His  private  wealth,  his  property  to  be, 
And  hide  in  Lemnian  cave  her  light  of  love. 
If  some  new  truth,  O  friend,  thy  toil  discover, 
If  thine  eyes  first  by  some  fair  form  be  blest. 
Love  it  for  what  it  is,  and  as  a  lover 
Gaze,  or  with  joy  receive  thine  honoured  guest : 
The  new-found  Thought,  set  free,  awhile  may  hover 
Gratefully  near  thee,  but  it  cannot  rest. 


N 


English  Sonnets  18 1 

CCCLVII 
NOT  TO  THE  MULTITUDE. 
OT  to  the  multitude,  oh  !  not  to  them,  Henry 

'  _  '  Glassford 

But  to  the  sacred  few,  the  circle  small  Bell 

Which  formed  thy  world  and  was  thy  all-in-all,  1805— 1874 

Entrust  thy  memory  ;  and  like  a  gem 
Love's  gift,  worn  ever  next  the  heart,  'twill  lie 
Imbedded  in  delight,  deep,  stainless,  warm  ; 
For  if  thy  living  voice,  aspect,  and  form 
Gladdened  the  ear  and  pleased  thewatchful  eye 
Of  old  affection,  doubt  not  thou  that  death 
Will  make  thee  doubly  dear,  and  that  no  voice 
Will  e'er  again  those  constant  souls  rejoice, 
Like  that  which  God  took  from  them  with  thy  breath. 
Thou  diest  to  the  crowd,  but  not  to  these  : 
They  see  thee  in  the  mist,  and  hear  thee  in  the  breeze. 


CCCLVIII 
THE   COTTAGE-DOOR. 

T  T  OW  softly  Summer's  breath  is  wafted  here 

From  the  high  peaks  of  green  and  silent  hills! 
How  gently  warble  at  their  own  sweet  wills 
The  song-birds  nestled  trustingly  and  near  ! 
Nor  is  thy  song  less  sweet,  O  streamlet  clear, 
That  wimples  through  this  quiet  beloved  glen ; — 
What  other  water  in  the  world  again 
Will  be  to  me  so  musical,  so  dear  ? 
Yet  softer,  sweeter,  dearer  than  all  these, 
The  household  voices  at  my  cottage-door, 
With  joy  enriching  every  passing  breeze, 
Till  the  full  heart  with  thankfulness  runs  o'er. 
And  pensive  Fancy  with  no  sadness  sees 
Lost  faces  smiling  from  the  shadowy  shore. 


l82 


A  Treasury  of 


CCCLIX 
A   MEDITATION  AT  NETLEY  ABBEY. 

John  Sterling    "[V[0W  dcwy  twilight  o'er  these  shattered  walls 
1806— 1844       ^  ^     Breathes  from  the  closing  eyelids  of  the  skies  ; 
The  blessed  night,  with  starry  influence,  falls 
O'er  carved  remains,  and  boughs  that  heavenward  rise; 
The  healing  gentleness  of  evening  sighs 
From  arch  to  arch,  and  thrills  the  slumbering  trees ; 
And,  like  the  memory  of  dead  centuries. 
The  shadows  stride  before  the  lingering  breeze. 
The  pinions  of  the  heavens,  with  fleckered  gloom, 
Enfold  the  world,  and  the  adoring  earth 
To  all  religion  ;  here  there  is  no  tomb, 
But  holy  promise  of  that  second  birth, 
When  o'er  man's  ruin  Beauty  shall  retufn. 
And  perfect  Love  shall  light  his  funeral  urn. 


Helena 

Clarissa 

Von  Ranke 

1808— 1871 


CCCLX 
LOVE. 

PARTLY    SUGGESTED    BY   A   GERMAN   SONG. 

TTEART  of  my  heart !  of  Love  let  us  commune. 

And  tell  me  '  how  it  comes  ? '  and  '  what  it  is  ? ' 
"  Love  comes  !  and  it  is  there,  replete  with  bliss  ; 
A  sun  of  light,  bringing  eternal  noon, 
New  life  to  life  ;  new  powers,  fresh  flowers,  its  boon." 
But  what  in  sooth  ?     *'  Two  souls  in  sweet  accord, 
Each  for  each  caring  and  each  self  unheard, 
Bringing  life's  discords  into  perfect  tune  ; 
True  to  true  feeling,  and  to  nature  living. 
Plighting  no  faith,  nor  needing  proof  nor  proving, 
Taking  for  granted,  never  asking,  giving. 
Not  doubting  and  not  fearing  '  how  ? '  or  '  where  ? ' 
Not  caring  if  less  bright  or  young  or  fair  ; 
Sure  to  be  ever  loved,  and  sure  of  loving." 


English  Sonnets  183 

CCCLXI 

THE  OCEAN. 

THE  Ocean,  at  the  bidding  of  the  Moon,  Charles 

'  *^  \\  ENNYSONj 

For  ever  changes  with  his  restless  tide  ;  turner 

Flung  shoreward  now,  to  be  regathered  soon  iSoS— 1879 

With  kingly  pauses  of  reluctant  pride, 

And  semblance  of  return.     Anon  from  home 

He  issues  forth  again,  high-ridged  and  free. 

The  seething  hiss  of  his  tumultuous  foam 

Like  armies  whispering  where  great  echoes  be  ! 

Oh  !  leave  me  here  upon  this  beach  to  rove. 

Mute  listener  to  that  sound  so  grand  and  lone — • 

A  glorious  sound,  deep-drawn  and  strongly  thrown, 

And  reaching  those  on  mouhtain-heights  above  ; 

To  British  ears,  as  who  shall  scorn  to  own, 

A  tutelar  fond  voice,  a  saviour-tone  of  love  ! 


CCCLXII 
A  SUMMER  TWILIGHT. 

TT  is  a  summer  twilight,  balmy-sweet, 

A  twilight  brightened  by  an  infant  moon, 
Fraught  with  the  fairest  light  of  middle  June  ; 
The  lonely  garden  echoes  to  my  feet, 
And  hark  !  O  hear  I  not  the  gentle  dews. 
Fretting  the  silent  forest  in  his  sleep  ? 
Or  does  the  stir  of  housing  insects  creep 
Thus  faintly  on  mine  ear  ?     Day's  many  hues  . 
Waned  with  the  paling  light  and  are  no  more, 
And  none  but  reptile  pinions  beat  the  air  : 
The  bat  is  hunting  softly  by  my  door, 
And,  noiseless  as  the  snow-flake,  leaves  his  lair  ; 
O'er  the  still  copses  flitting  here  and  there, 
Wheeling  the  self-same  circuit  o'er  and  o'er. 


184  A  Treasury  of 

CCCLXIII 
THE   RAINBOW. 

Charles        TTUNG  OH  the  shower  that  fronts  the  golden  West, 
'I'uRNER  -L     "Yht  rainbow  bursts  Hke  magic  on  mine  eyes  ! 

1808—1879       jn  hues  of  ancient  promise  there  imprest  ; 
Frail  in  its  date,  eternal  in  its  guise  ; 
The  vision  is  so  lovely,  that  I  feel 
My  heart  imbued  with  beauty  like  its  own, 
And  taking  an  indissoluble  seal 
From  what  is  here  a  moment,  and  is  gone  ; 
It  lies  so  soft  on  the  full-breasted  storm, 
New-born  o'  the  middle  air,  and  dewy-pure, 
And  tricked  in  Nature's  choicest  garniture  ; 
What  can  be  seen  of  lovelier  dye  or  form  ? 
While  all  the  groves  assume  a  ghastly  stain, 
Caught  from  the  leaden  rack  and  shining  rain  ! 


CCCLXIV 
A    FOREST  LAKE.  \ 


O 


LAKE  of  sylvan  shore  !  when  gentle  Spring 


Slopes  down  upon  thee  from  the  mountain-side, 
When  birds  begin  to  build  and  brood  and  sing  ; 
Or,  in  maturer  season,  when  the  pied 
And  fragrant  turf  is  thronged  with  blossoms  rare  ; 
In  the  frore  sweetness  of  the  breathing  morn, 
When  the  loud  echoes  of  the  herdsman's  horn 
Do  sally  forth  upon  the  silent  air 
Of  thy  thick  forestry,  may  I  be  there, 
While  the  wood  waits  to  see  its  phantom  born 
At  clearing  twilight,  in  thy  glassy  breast  ; 
Or,  when  cool  eve  is  busy,  on  thy  shores, 
With  trails  of  purple  shadow  from  the  West, 
Or  dusking  in  the  wake  of  tardy  oars. 


English  Sonnets  185 

CCCLXV 
ON  STARTLING   SOME  PIGEONS. 

A    HUNDRED  wings  are  dropt  as  soft  as  one,  (Te"ny^on) 

"^     Now  ye  are  lighted  !     Pleasing  to  my  sight  turner 

The  fearful  circle  of  your  wondering  flight,  1808-1879 

Rapid  and  loud,  and  drawing  homeward  soon ; 
And  then,  the  sober  chiding  of  your  tone, 
As  there  ye  sit,  from  your  own  roofs  arraigning 
My  trespass  on  your  haunts,  so  boldly  done, 
Sounds  like  a  solemn  and  a  just  complaining  : 
O  happy,  happy  race  !  for  though  there  clings 
A  feeble  fear  about  your  timid  cl^n. 
Yet  are  ye  blest !  with  not  a  thought  that  brings 
Disquietude, — while  proud  and  sorrowing  man, 
An  eagle,  weary  of  his  mighty  wings. 
With  anxious  inquest  fills  his  mortal  span  ! 


CCCLXVI 
0  GOD,  IMPART   THY  BLESSING. 

f~\  GOD,  impart  Thy  blessing  to  my  cries  ! 

^^^     I  trust  but  faintly,  and  I  dail)''  err  ; 

The  waters  of  my  heart  are  oft  astir. 

An  angel's  there  !  and  yet  I  cannot  rise  ! 

Ah  !  would  my  Lord  were  here  amongst  us  still, 

Proffering  his  bosom  to  his  servant's  brow  ; 

Too  oft  that  holy  life  comes  o'er  us  now 

tike  twilight  echoes  from  a  distant  hill  ; 

We  long  for  his  pure  looks  and  words  sublime  ; 

His  lowly-lofty  innocence  and  grace  ; 

The  talk  sweet-toned,  and  blessing  all  the  time  ; 

The  mountain  sermon  and  the  ruthful  gaze  ; 

The  cheerly  credence  gathered  from  his  face  ; 

His  voice"  in  village  groups  at  eve  or  prime  ! 


Charles 

(Tennyson) 

Turner 

1808 — 1879 


186  A  Treasury  of 

CCCLXVII 

AUT  UMN. 

'  I  "HE  softest  shadows  mantle  o'er  his  form, 

And  the  curved  sickle  in  his  grasp  appears, 
Glooming  and  brightening  ;  while  a  wreath  of  ears 
Circles  his  sallow  brow,  which  the  angry  storm 
Gusts  down  at  intervals  ;  about  him  stray 
The  volant  sweets  o'  the  trailing  migonnette, 
And  odours  vague  that  haunt  the  year's  decay  ; 
The  crush  of  leaves  is  heard  beneath  his  feet, 
Mixed,  as  he  onward  goes,  with  softer  sound, 
As  though  his  heel  were  sinking  into  snows  : 
Full  soon  a  sadder  landscape  opens  round, 
With,  here  and  there,  a  latter-flowering  rose. 
Child  of  the  summer  hours,  though  blooming  here 
Far  down  the  vista  of  the  fading  year. 


CCCLXVIII 
TO    THE  NIGHTINGALE. 

f~\  HONEY-throated  warbler  of  the  grove  ! 

^^^     That  in  the  glooming  woodland  art  so  proud 

Of  answering  thy  sweet  mates  in  soft  or  loud, 

Thou  dost  not  own  a  note  we  do  not  love  ; 

The  moon  is  o'er  thee,  laying  out  the  lawn 

In  mighty  shadows — but  the  western  skies 

Are  kept  awake,  to  see  the  sun  arise. 

Though  earth  and  heaven  would  fain  put  back  the 

dawn  ! 
While,  wandering  for  the  dreams  such  seasons  give. 
With  lonely  steps,  and  many  a  pause  between. 
The  lover  listens  to  thy  songs  unseen  ; 
And  if,  at  times,  the  pure -notes  seem  to  grieve, 
Why  lo  !  he  weeps  himself,  and  must  believe 
That  sorrow  is  a  part  of  what  they  mean  ! 


English  Sonnets  187 

CCCLXIX 
THE   TRAVELLER  AND  HIS  WIFE'S  RINGLET. 


I 


HAVE  a  circlet  of  thy  sunny  hair,  Charles 

■'  (Tennyson) 

A  hght  from  home,  a  blessing  to  mine  eyes  ;  Turner 

Though  grave  and  mournful  thoughts  will  often  rise,       1808-1879 
As  I  behold  it  mutely  glistening  there, 
So  still,  so  passive  !  like  a  treasure's  key. 
Unconscious  of  the  dreams  it  doth  compel, 
Of  gems  and  gold,  high-piled  in  secret  cell. 
Too  royal  for  a  vulgar  gaze  to  see ! 
If  they  were  stolen,  the  key  could  never  tell ; 
If  thou  wert  dead,  what  should  thy  ringlet  say  ? 
It  shows  the  same,  betide  thee  ill  or  well, 
Smiling  in  love,  or  shrouded  in  decay  ; 
It  cannot  darken  for  dead  Isabel, 
Nor  blanch  if  thy  young  head  grew  white  to-day  ! 


CCCLXX 
THE  BUOY-BELL. 

TTOW  like  the  leper,  with  his  own  sad  cry 

Enforcing  his  own  solitude,  it  tolls ! 
That  lonely  bell  set  in  the  rushing  shoals, 
To  warn  us  from  the  place  of  jeopardy  ! 
O  friend  of  man  !  sore-vexed  by  Ocean's  power, 
The  changing  tides  wash  o'er  thee  day  by  day  ; 
Thy  trembling  mouth  is  filled  with  bitter  spray, 
Yet  still  thou  ringest  on  from  hour  to  hour  ; 
High  is  thy  mission,  though  thy  lot  is  wild — 
To  be  in  danger's  realm  a  guardian  sound  ; 
In  seamen's  dreams  a  pleasant  part  to  bear. 
And  earn  their  blessing  as  the  year  goes  round  ; 
And  strike  the  key-note  of  each  grateful  prayer. 
Breathed  in  their  distant  homes  by  wife  or  child  ! 


1 88  A   Treasury  of 

CCCLXXI 

MORNING. 
Charles        jx  IS  the  fairest  Sight  in  Nature's  realms, 

(Tennyson)  I  . 

Turner         "^     To  see  OH  Summer  morning,  dewy-sweet, 
1808— 1879       That  very  type  of  freshness,  the  green  wheat, 

Surging  through  shadows  of  the  hedgerow  elms  ; 
How  the  eye  revels  in  the  many  shapes 
And  colours  which  the  risen  day  restores  ! 
How  the  wind  blows  the  poppy's  scarlet  capes 
About  his  urn  !  and  how  the  lark  upsoars  ! 
Not  like  the  timid  corn-craik  scudding  fast 
From  his  own  voice,  he  with  him  takes  his  song 
Heavenward,  then,  striking  sideways,  shoots  along, 
Happy  as  sailor-boy  that,  from  the  mast, 
Runs  out  upon  the  yard-arm,  till  at  last 
He  sinks  into  his  nest,  those  clover  tufts  among. 


CCCLXXII 

WIND   ON   THE    CORN.  '  \ 

■1 
"PULL  often  as  I  rove  by  path  or  stile,  j 

To  watch  the  harvest  ripening  in  the  vale,  \ 

Slowly  and  sweetly,  like  a  growing  smile — 
A  smile  that  ends  in  laughter — the  quick  gale  ; 

Upon  the  breadths  of  gold-green  wheat  descends  ;  j 

"While  still  the  swallow,  with  unbaffled  grace,  I 

About  his  viewless  quarry  dips  and  bends —  j 

And  all  the  fine  excitement  of  the  chase  ■• 

Lies  in  the  hunter's  beauty  :  in  the  eclipse  ' 

Of  that  brief  shadow,  how  the  barley's  beard  : 

Tilts  at  the  passing  gloom,  and  wild-rose  dips  , 

Among  the  white-tops  in  the  ditches  reared  :  ] 

And  hedgerow's  flowery  breast  of  lacework  stirs  1 

Faintly  in  that  full  wind  that  rocks  the  outstanding  firs.  ■ 


English  Sonnets  189 

CCCLXXIII 
THE  FOREST  GLADE. 

A  S  one  dark  morn  I  trod  a  forest  glade,  (Tennyson) 

■^^     A  sunbeam  entered  at  the  further  end,  Turner 

And  ran  to  meet  me  through  the  yielding  shade —  1808—1879 

As  one,  who  in  the  distance  sees  a  friend, 
And,  smiling,  hurries  to  him  ;  but  mine  eyes. 
Bewildered  by  the  change  from  dark  to  bright, 
Received  the  greeting  with  a  quick  surprise 
At  first,  and  then  with  tears  of  pure  delight ; 
For  sad  my  thoughts  had  been — the  tempest's  wrath 
Had  gloomed  the  night,  and  made  the  morrow  gray  : 
That  heavenly  guidance  humble  sorrow  hath, 
Had  turned  my  feet  into  that  forest-way. 
Just  when  His  morning  light  came  down  the  path, 
Among  the  lonely  woods  at  early  day. 


CCCLXXIV 
THE  LA  TTICE  A  T  SUNRLSE. 

A  S  on  my  bed  at  dawn  I  mused  and  prayed, 
"^     I  saw  my  lattice  prankt  upon  the  wall, 
The  flaunting  leaves  and  flitting  birds  withal — 
A  sunny  phantom  interlaced  with  shade  ; 
'  Thanks  be  to  heaven  !  '  in  happy  mood  I  said, 
*  What  sweeter  aid  my  matins  could  befall 
Than  this  fair  glory  from  the  East  hath  made  ? 
What  holy  sleights  hath  God,  the  Lord  of  all. 
To  bid  us  feel  and  see  !  we  are  not  free 
To  say  we  see  not,  for  the  glory  comes 
Nightly  and  daily,  like  the  flowing  sea ; 
His  lustre  pierceth  through  the  midnight  glooms  ; 
And,  at  prime  hour,  behold  !  He  follows  me 
With  golden  shadows  to  my  secret  room^  ! 


1 9°  A  Treasury  of 


CCCLXXV 
THE  PROCESS  OF  COMPOSITION.  \ 

AN   ILLUSTRATION.  •  j 

Charles        f"^'^'^  ^^  °^^  fancy  an  Uncertain  thought  ; 

^Turner"^      ^~^^      Hangs  colourless,  like  dew  on  bents  of  grass,  i 

i8o8l^S79       Before  the  morning  o'er  the  field  doth  pass  ; 

But  soon  it  glows  and  brightens  ;  all  unsought 

A  sudden  glory  flashes  through  the  dream, 

Our  purpose  deepens  and  our  wit  grows  brave, 

The  thronging  hints  a  richer  utterance  crave, 

And  tongues  of  fire  approach  the  new-won  theme  ; 

A  subtler  process  now  begins — a  claim 

Is  urged  for  order,  a  well-balanced  scheme 

Of  words  and  numbers,  a  consistent  aim  ; 

The  dew  dissolves  before  the  warming  beam  ; 

But  that  fair  thought  consolidates  its  flame, 

And  keeps  its  colours,  hardening  to  a  gem.  ! 

CCCLXXVI  ' 

IN  AND  OUT  OF  THE  PINE-WOOD.  J 

A    SIMILE. 

"DEYOND   the  pine-wood  all  looked  bright  and  ; 

-*-^          clear —  \ 

And,  ever  by  our  side,  as  on  we  drove, 

The  star  of  eve  ran  glimpsing  through  the  grove 

To  meet  us  in  the  open  atmosphere  ;  ; 

As  some  fair  thought  of  heavenly  light  and  force  I 

Will  move  and  flash  behind  a  transient  screen  I 

Of  dim  expression,  glittering  in  its  course 

Through  many  loop-holes,  till  its  face  is  seen  ; 

Some  thoughts  ne'er  pass  beyond  their  close  confines;  \ 

Theirs  is  the  little  taper's  homely  lot,  ] 

A  woodside  glimmer,  distanced  and  forgot —  ; 

Whose  trivial  gleam,  that  twinkles  more  than  shines,  \ 

Is  left  behind  to  die  among  the  pines  ;  ' 

Our  stars  ape  carried  out,  and  vanish  not ! 


w 


English  Sonnets  191 

CCCLXXVII 
THE    GOLD-CRESTED   WREN. 

HIS    RELATION    TO  THE   SONNET. 

HEN  my  hand  closed  upon  thee,  worn  and  spent        Charles 

.  .  '^  _  '■  (lENNVSON) 

With  idly  dashing  on  the  window-pane,  Turner 

Or  clinging  to  the  cornice — I,  that  meant  1808— 1879 

At  once  to  free  thee,  could  not  but  detain  ; 
I  dropt  my  pen,  I  left  th'  unfinished  lay, 
To  give  thee  back  to  freedom  ;  but  I  took — 
Oh,  charm  of  sweet  occasion  ! — one  brief  look 
At  thy  bright  eyes  and  innocent  dismay  ; 
Then  forth  I  sent  thee  on  thy  homeward  quest, 
My  lesson  learnt — thy  beauty  got  by  heart  : 
And  if,  at  times,  my  sonnet-muse  would  rest 
Short  of  her  topmost  skill,  her  little  best, 
The  memory  of  thy  delicate  gold  crest 
Shall  plead  for  one  last  touch, — the  crown  of  Art. 


CCCLXXVIII 
TO  THE  GOSSAMER-LIGHT. 

/^UICK  gleam  !  that  ridest  on  the  gossamers  ! 
-=i^     How  oft  I  see  thee,  with  thy  wavering  lance. 
Tilt  at  the  midges  in  their  evening  dance, 
A  gentle  joust  set  on  by  summer  airs  ! 
How  oft  I  watch  thee  from  my  garden-chair  ! 
And,  failing  that,  I  search  the  lawns  and  bowers, 
To  find  thee  floating  o'er  the  fruits  and  flowers, 
And  doing  thy  sweet  work  in  silence  there  : 
Thou  art  the  poet's  darfing,  ever  sought 
In  the  fair  garden  or  the  breezy  mead  ; 
The  wind  dismounts  thee  not  ;  thy  buoyant  thread 
Is  as  the  sonnet,  poising  one  bright  thought. 
That  moves  but  does  not  vanish  !  borne  alona: 
Like  light, — a  golden  drift  through  all  the  song  ! 


192  A  Treasury  of  \ 

CCCLXXIX  j 

i 
AN  APRIL  DA  V.  J 

Charles        '  I  "HE  lark  sung  loud  ;  the  music  at  his  heart 

fTENNYSON)  1  -TT       1  11       1   1    •  1  1-11  i 

Turner  "^       Had  called  him  early  ;  upward  straight  he  went, 

1808— 1879       And  bore  in  nature's  quire  the  merriest  part, 
As  to  the  lake's  broad  shore  my  steps  I  bent ; 
The  waterflies  with  glancing  motion  drove  ] 

Their  dimpling  eddies  in  among  the  blooms 
Shed  by  the  flowering  poplars  from  above  ;  1 

While,  overhead,  the  rooks,  on  sable  plumes,  1 

Floated  and  dipt  about  the  gleaming  haze  ■ 

Of  April,  crost  anon  by  April  glooms, 

As  is  the  fashion  of  her  changeful  days  ;  j 

When,  what  the  rain-cloud  blots,  the  sun  relumes  j 

O'  the  instant,  and  the  shifting  landscape  shows  j 

Each  change,  and,  like  a  tide,  the  distance  comes  and  '• 

goes  !  '   ; 


CCCLXXX 
A   BRILLIANT  DAY.    ' 

C~\  KEEN  pellucid  air  !  nothing  can  lurk 
Or  disavow  itself  on  this  bright  day  ; 
The  small  rain-plashes  shine  from  far  away. 
The  tiny  emmet  glitters  at  his  work  ; 
The  bee  looks  blithe  and  gay,  and  as  she  plies 
Her  task,  and  moves  and  sidles  round  the  cup 
Of  this  spring  flower,  to  drink  its  honey  up, 
Her  glassy  wings,  like  oars  that  dip  and  rise. 
Gleam  momently.     Pure-bosomed,  clear  of  fog,  j 

The  long  lake  glistens,  while  the  glorious  beam  1 

Bespangles  the  wet  joints  and  floating  leaves  j 

Of  water-plants,  whose  every  point  receives  \ 

His  light  ;  and  jellies  of  the  spawning  frog,  : 

Unmarked  before,  like  piles  of  jewels  seem  ! 


English  Sonnets  193 

CCCLXXXI 
THE  HOME-FIELD.     EVENING. 

TIS  sweet,  when  slanting  light  the  field  adorns,  Charles 

'  °      ^  .  (Tennyson) 

To  see  the  new-shorn  flocks  recline  or  browse  ;        Turner 

While  swallows  flit  among  the  restful  cows,  1808— 1879 

Their  gurgling  dew-laps,  and  their  harmless  horns  ; 

Or  flirt  the  aged  hunter,  in  his  doze. 

With  passing  wing  ;  yet  with  no  thought  to  grieve 

His  mild,  unjealous,  innocent  repose. 

With  those  keen  contrasts  our  sad  hearts  conceive. 

And  then,  perchance,  the  evening  wind  awakes 

With  sudden  tumult,  and  the  bowery  ash 

Goes  storming  o'er  the  golden  moon,  whose  flash 

Fills  and  refills  its  breezy  gaps  and  breaks  ; 

The  weeping-willow  at  her  neighbour  floats, 

And  busy  rustlings  stir  the  wheat  and  oats. 


CCCLXXXII 
MAGGIES    STAR. 

TO   THE   WHITE   STAR   ON   THE   FOREHEAD   OF   A    FAVOURITE   OLD   MARE. 

"\yl /"HITE  star  !  that  travellest  at  old  Maggie's  pace 
About  my  field,  where'er  a  wandering  mouth, 
And  foot,  that  slowly  shifts  from  place  to  place. 
Conduct  thee, — East  or  West,  or  North  or  South  ; 
A  loving  eye  is  my  best  chart  to  find 
Thy  whereabouts  at  dawn  or  dusk  ;  but  when         • 
She  dreams  at  noon,  with  heel  a-tilt  behind, 
And  pendent  lip,  I  mark  thee  fairest  then  ; 
I  see  thee  dip  and  vanish,  when  she  rolls 
On  earth,  supine,  then  with  one  rousing  shake 
Reculminate  ;  but,  most,  thou  lov'st  to  take 
A  quiet  onward  course — Heaven's  law  controls 
The  mild,  progressive  motion  thou  dost  make, 
Albeit  thy  path  is  scarce  above  the  mole's. 


194  ^  Treasury  of 

CCCLXXXIII 
A  SUMMER  NIGHT  IN  THE  BEEHIVE. 

riVNOT^^i      T^HE  little  bee  returns  with  evening's  gloom, 
Turner  Xo  join  her  comrades  in  the  braided  hive, 

1808— 1879      Where,  housed  beside  their  mighty  honeycomb, 
They  dream  their  polity  shall  long  survive. 
Still  falls  the  summer  night — the  browsing  horse 
Fills  the  low  portal  with  a  grassy  sound 
From  the  near  paddock,  while  the  water-course 
Sends  them  sweet  murmurs  from  the  meadow-ground: 
None  but  such  peaceful  noises  break  the  hush, 
Save  Pussy,  growling,  in  the  thyme  and  sage, 
Over  the  thievish  mouse,  in  happy  rage  : 
At  last,  the  flowers  against  the  threshold  brush 
In  morning  airs — fair  shines  the  uprisen  sun  ; 
Another  day  of  honey  has  begun  ! 


CCCLXXXIV 
THE  BEE-  WISP. 

/^UR  window-panes  enthral  our  summer  bees  ; 
^-^     (To  insect  woes  I  give  this  little  page) — 
We  hear  them  threshing  in  their  idle  rage 
Those  crystal  floors  of  famine,  while,  at  ease, 
Their  outdoor  comrades  probe  the  nectaries 
Qf  flowers,  and  into  all  sweet  blossoms  dive  ; 
Then  home,  at  sundown,  to  the  happy  hive, 
On  forward  wing,  straight  through  the  dancing  flies 
For  such  poor  strays  a  full-plumed  wisp  I  keep, 
And  when  I  see  them  pining,  worn,  and  vext, 
I  brush  them  softly  with  a  downward  sweep 
To  the  raised  sash — all-angered  and  perplext  : 
So  man,  the  insect,  stands  on  his  defense 
Against  the  very  hand  of  Providence. 


T 


English  Sonnets  195 

CCCLXXXV 
MINNIE   AND  HER  DOVE. 

WO  days  she  missed  her  dove,  and  then,  alas  !  c^^^^^^^ 

•'  '  '  (lENNYSON) 

A  knot  of  soft  gray  feathers  met  her  view,  turner 

So  light,  their  stirring  hardly  broke  the  dew  iSos— 1879 

That  hung  on  the  blue  violets  and  the  grass  ; 
A  kite  had  struck  her  fondling  as  he  passed  ; 
And  o'er  that  fleeting,  downy  epitaph 
The  poor  child  lingered,  weeping  ;  her  gay  laugh 
Was  mute  that  day,  her  little  heart  o'ercast. 
Ah  !  Minnie,  if.  thou  livest,  thou  wilt  prove 
Intenser  pangs— less  tearful,  though  less  brief  ; 
Thou'lt  weep  for  dearer  death  and'  sweeter  love, 
And  spiritual  woe,  of  woes  the  chief, 
Until  the  full-grown  wings  of  human  grief 
Eclipse  thy  memory  of  the  kite  and  dove. 


CCCLXXXVI 
THE  HOLY  EMERALD, 

SAID   TO    BE  THE   ONLY   TRUE   LIKENESS   OF   CHRIST. 

'T'HE  gem,  to  which  the  artist  did  entrust 

That  face  which  now  outshines  the  Cherubim, 
Gave  up,  full  willingly,  its  emerald  dust. 
To  take  Christ's  likeness — to  make  room  for  him. 
So  must  it  be,  if  thou  wouldst  bear  about 
Thy  Lord — thy  shining  surface  must  be  lowered. 
Thy  goodly  prominence  be  chipt  and  scored. 
Till  those  deep  scars  have  brought  his  features  out : 
Sharp  be  the  stroke  and  true,  make  no  complaipts  ; 
For  heavenly  lines  thou  givest  earthly  grit  : 
But  oh  !  how  oft  our  coward  spirit  faints. 
When  we  are  called  our  jewels  to  submit 
To  this  keen  graver,  which  so  oft  hath  writ 
The  Saviour's  image  on  his  wounded  saints  ! 


196  A   Treasury  of 


CCCLXXXVII 
OUR  MARY  AND   THE  CHILD-MUMMY. 


Charles        T  1  /"HEN  the  four  quarters  of  the  world  shall  rise, 

rENNYSON)  VV 

Turner  ♦  *       Men,  women,  children,  at  the  Judgment-time, 

1808— 1879       Perchance  this  Memphian  girl,  dead  ere  her  prime. 
Shall  drop  her  mask,  and  with  dark  new-born  eyes 
Salute  our  English  Mary,  loved  and  lost ; 
The  Father  knows  her  little  scroll  of  prayer, 
And  life  as  pure  as  the  Egyptian  air  ; 
For,  though  she  knew  not  Jesus,  nor  the  cost 
At  which  He  won  the  world,  she  learned  to  pray  ; 
And  though  our  own  sweet  babe  on  Christ's  good  name 
Spent  her  last  breath,  premonished  and  advised 
Of  him,  and  in  his  glorious  Church  baptized. 
She  will  not  spurn  this  old-world  child  away, 
Nor  put  her  poor  embalmed  heart  to  shame. 


CCCLXXXVIII 
ON  FINDING  A  SMALL  FL  Y  CRUSHED  IN  A  BOOK. 

OOME  hand,  that  never  meant  to  do  thee  hurt, 

Has  crushed  thee  here  between  these  pages  pent ; 
But  thou  hast  left  thine  own  fair  monument. 
Thy  wings  gleam  out  and  tell  me  what  thou  wert : 
Oh  !  that  the  memories  which  survive  us  here 
Were  half  as  lovely  as  these  wings  of  thine  ! 
Pure  relics  of  a  blameless  life,  that  shine 
Now  thou  art  gone  :  Our  doom  is  ever  near  : 
The  peril  is  beside  us  day  by  day  ; 
The  book  will  close  upon  us,  it  may  be, 
Just  as  we  lift  ourselves  to  soar  away 
Upon  the  summer-airs.     But,  unlike  thee, 
The  closing  book  may  stop  our  vital  breath, 
Yet  leave  no  lustre  on  our  page  of  death. 


o 


English  Sonnets  197 

CCCLXXXIX 
TO  A  RED-  WHEA  T  FIELD. 

RICH  red  wheat  !  thou  wilt  not  lone  defer  Charles 

(Tennvson) 

i  hy  beauty,  though  thou  art  not  wholly  grown  ;        Turner 
The  fair  blue  distance  and  the  moorland  fir  1808-1879 

Long  for  thy  golden  laughter !     Four  years  gone, 
How  oft  !  with  eager  foot,  I  scaled  the  top 
Of  this  long  rise,  to  give  mine  eye  full  range  ; 
And,  now  again,  rotation  brings  the  change 
From  seeds  and  clover,  to  my  favourite  crop  ; 
How  oft  Fve  watched  thee  from  my  garden,  charmed 
With  thy  noon-stillness,  or  thy  morning  tears  ! 
Or,  when  the  wind  clove  and  the  sunset  warmed 
Thine  amber-shafted  depths  and  russet  ears  ; 
O  !  all  ye  cool  green  stems  1  improve  the  time, 
Fulfil  your  beauty  !  justify  my  rime  ! 


cccxc 

THE  HARVEST  MOON. 

TTOW  peacefully  the  broad  and  golden  moon 
Comes  up  to  gaze  upon  the  reaper's  toil  ! 
That  they  who  own  the  land  for  many  a  mile, 
May  bless  her  beams,  and  they  who  take  the  boon 
Of  scattered  ears  ;  Oh  !  beautiful  !  how  soon 
The  dusk  is  turned  to  silver  without  soil, 
Which  makes  the  fair  sheaves  fairer  than  at  noon, 
And  guides  the  gleaner  to  his  slender  spoil  ; 
So,  to  our  souls,  the  Lord  of  love  and  might 
Sends  harvest-hours,  when  daylight  disappears  ; 
When  age  and  sorrow,  like  a  coming  night. 
Darken  our  field  of  work  with  doubts  and  fears. 
He  times  the  presence  of  his  heavenly  light 
To  rise  up  softly  o'er  our  silver  hairs. 


,  198  A  Treasury  of 

cccxci 
THE  SPARRO  W  AND  THE  BE  W-DROP. 

(Tenn^ys^n)      AA/'^^''^  ^°  ^^  birds  their  morning  meal  I  threw, 
Turner  V  V       gggi^jg  one  perky  candidate  for  bread 

1808-1879       There  flashed  and  winked  a  tiny  drop  of  dew, 
But  while  I  gazed,  I  lost  them, — both  had  fled  ; 
His  careless  tread  had  struck  the  blade-hung  tear, 
And  all  its  silent  beauty  fell  away, 
And  left,  sole  relic  of  the  twinkling  sphere, 
A  sparrow's  dabbled  foot  upon  a  spray  ; 
Bold  bird  !  that  did'st  efface  a  lovely  thing 
Before  a  poet's  eyes  !     I've  half  a  mind. 
Could  I  but  single  thee  from  out  thy  kind, 
To  mulct  thee  in  a  crumb  ;  a  crumb  to  thee 
Is  not  more  sweet  than  that  fair  drop  to  me  ; 
Fie  on  thy  little  foot  and  thrumming  wing  ! 


CCCXCII 
GOUT  AND   WINGS. 

'  I  ''HE  pigeons  fluttered  fieldward,  one  and  all, 
■*■      I  saw  the  swallows  wheel,  and  soar,  and  dive, 
The  little  bees  hung  poised  before  the  hive, 
Even  Partlet  hoised  herself  across  the  wall : 
I  felt  my  earth-bound  lot  in  every  limb, 
And,  in  my  envious  mood,  I  half-rebelled. 
When  lo  !  an  insect  crossed  the  page  I  held, 
A  little  helpless  minim,  slight  and  slim  ; 
Ah  !  sure,  there  was  no  room  for  envy  there, 
But  gracious  aid  and  condescending  care  ; 
Alas  !  my  pride  and  pity  were  misspent, 
The  atopi  knew  his  strength,  and  rose  in  air  ! 
My  gout  came  tingling  back,  as  off  he  went : 
A  wing  was  opened  at  me  everywhere  ! 


English  Sonnets  199 


CCCXCIII 
THE   SEASIDE, 

IN   AND    OUT   OF  THE   SEASON. 


I 


N  summer-time  it  was  a  paradise 


Of  mountain,  frith,  and  bay,  and  shinins  sand  ;  Charles 

•^  "  (Tennyson) 

Our  outward  rowers  sang  towards  the  land,  turner 

Followed  by  waving  hands  and  happy  cries  ;  iSoS— 1S79 

By  the  full  flood  the  groups  no  longer  roam  ; 

And  when,  at  ebb,  the  glistening  beach  grows  wide. 

No  barefoot  children  race  into  the  foam. 

But  passive  jellies  wait  the  turn  of  tide. 

Like  some  forsaken  lover,  lingering  there. 

The  boatman  stands  ;  the  maidens  trip  no  more 

With  loosened  locks  ;  far  from  the  billows'  roar 

The  Mauds  and  Maries  knot  their  tresses  fair. 

Where  not  a  foam-flake  from  the  enamoured  shore 

Comes  down  the  sea-wind  on  the  golden  hair. 


cccxciv 
OUR  I^EW  CHURCH  CLOCK. 

XT ENCEFORWARD  shall  our  time  be  plainly  read- 

Down  in  the  nave  I  catch  the  twofold  beat 
Of  those  full-weighted  moments  overhead  ; 
And  hark  !  the  hour  goes  clanging  down  the  street 
To  the  open  plain  !     How  sweet  at  eventide 
Will  that  clear  music  be  to  toil-worn  men  ! 
Calling  them  home,  each  to  his  own  fire-side  ; 
How  sweet  the  toll  of  all  the  hours  till  then  ! 
The  cattle,  too,  the  self-same  sound  shall  hear. 
But  they  can  never  know  the  power  it  wields 
O'er  human  hearts,  that  labour,  hope,  and  fear  ; 
Our  village-clock  means  nought  to  steed  or  steer  ; 
The  call  of  Time  will  share  each  twinkling'ear 
With  summer  flies  and  voices  from  the  fields  ! 


i 

i 

200  A  Treasury  of  : 

\ 
cccxcv  I 

THE  FELLED   OAK.  | 

GRASBY  VICARAGE,      SEPTEMBER    5TH,    1 874.  j 

Turner"  W  ^y^j^^ 

t8o8— 1879       Wert  seen  beyond  it,  we  were  so  slow  to  take  ' 

The  lesson  taught ;  for  our  old  neighbour's  sake 

We  found  thy  distant  presence  wan  and  cold, 

And  gave  thee  no  warm  welcome,  for  whene'er 

We  tried  to  dream  him  back  into  the  place 

Where  once  he  stood,  the  giant  of  his  race, 

'Twas  but  to  lift  an  eye  and  thou  wert  there. 

His  sad  remembrancer,  the  monument 

That  told  us  he  was  sfone.     But  thou  hast  blent  \ 

1 

Thy  beauty  with  our  loss  so  long  and  well,  i 

That  in  all  future  grief  we  may  foretell 

Some  lurking  good  behind  each  seeming  ill,  : 

Beyond  each  fallen  tree  some  fair  blue  hill. 

cccxcvi 
LET  TV'S  GLOBE, 

OR   SOME   IRREGULARITiaS   IN    A    FIRST    LESSON    IN    GEOGRAPHY.  i 

"\  7[ /"HEN  Letty  had  scarce  passed  her  third  glad  i 

year,  , 


And  her  young  artless  words  began  to  flow. 

One  day  we  gave  the  child  a  coloured  sphere  \ 

Of  the  wide  Earth,  that  she  might  mark  and  know  i 

By  tint  and  outline,  all  its  sea  and  land. 

She  patted  all  the  world  ;  old  Empires  peeped  ; 

Between  her  baby-fingers  ;  her  soft  hand 

Was  welcome  at  all  frontiers  ;  how  she  leaped,  j 

And  laughed,  and  prattled,  in  her  pride  of  bliss  I  ] 

But  when  we  turned  her  sweet  unlearned  eye  : 

On  our  own  Isle,  she  raised  a  joyous  cry,  -j 

*  O  yes  !  I  see  it,  Letty's  home  is  there  !  *  \ 

And  while  she  hid  all  England  with  a  kiss. 

Bright  over  Europe  fell  her  golden  hair.  ; 


English  Somiets  201 

CCCXCVII 
THE  SOUL'S  EXPRESSION, 

■\  1  7ITH  stammering  lips  and  insufficient  sound,  '^■bIkkItt 

*  ^       I  strive  and  struggle  to  deliver  right  Browning 

That  music  of  my  nature,  day  and  night  .         1809— 1861 

With  dream  and  thought  and  feeling  interwound, 
And  inly  answering  all  the  senses  round 
With  octaves  of  a  mystic  depth  and  height 
Which  step  out  grandly  to  the  infinite 
From  the  dark  edges  of  the  sensual  ground. 
This  song  of  soul  I  struggle  to  outbear 
Through  portals  of  the  sense,  sublime  and  whole, 
And  utter  all  myself  into  the  air  : 
But  if  I  did  it, — as  the  thunder-roll 
Breaks  its  own  cloud,  my  flesh  would  perish  there, 
Before  that  dread  apocalypse  of  soul. 


cccxcvm 
BEREA  VEMENT.  ' 

"VXTHEN  some  Beloveds,  'neath  whose  eyelids  lay 
^       The  sweet  lights  of  my  childhood,  one  by  one 
Did  leave  me  dark  before  the  natural  sun, 
And  I  astonied  fell,  and  could  not  pray, — 
A  thought  within  me  to  myself  did  say, 
'  Is  God  less  God,  that  ^/lou  art  left  undone  ? 
Rise,  worship,  bless  him,  in  this  sackcloth  spun, 
As  in  that  purple  !  ' — But  I  answered.  Nay  ! 
What  child  his  filial  heart  in  words  can  loose 
If  he  behold  his  tender  father  raise 
The  hand  that  chastens  sorely  ?  can  he  choose 
But  sob  in  silence  with  an  upward  gaze  ? — 
And  my  great  Father,  thinking  fit  to  bruise. 
Discerns  in  speechless  tears  both  prayer  and  praise. 


202  A   Treasury  of 

cccxcix 

COX  SOLA  TIOX.  \ 

Eij-^EHTH         A  LL  are  not  taken :  there  are  left  behind  I 

Basrett  AA  '  1 

Bsow>nxG        ^  *-     Lmngr  Beloveds,  tender  looks  to  bring  ' 


1800— iSci 


And  make  the  daylight  still  a  happy  thing,  : 

And  tender  voices,  to  make  soft  the  wind  :  ^ 

But  if  it  were  not  so — if  I  could  find  1 
No  love  in  all  the  world  for  comforting, 

Nor  any  path  but  hollowly  did  ring,  I 

"\Miere  '  dust  to  dust '  the  love  from  life  disjoined,  ' 

And  if,  before  those  sepulchres  unmo^-ing  \ 

I  stood  alone,  (as  some  forsaken  lamb  | 

Goes  bleating  up  the  moors  in  weary  dearth)  j 

Crying  '  Where  are  ye,  O  my  loved  and  lo^-ing  ? ' —  j 

I  know  a  Voice  would  sound,  *  Daughter,  I  A\r.  I 
Can  I  suffice  for  Hea\"ex  and  not  for  earth  ? ' 


cccc 

IRREPARABLEKESS. 


I 


HAVE  been  in  the  meadows  all  the  day 
And  gathered  there  the  nosegay  that  you  see, 


Singing  within  myself  as  bird  or  bee  , 


"VMien  such  do  field-work  on  a  mom  of  May. 
But  now  I  look  upon  my  flowers,  decay 
Has  met  them  in  my  hands  more  fatally 
Because  more  warmly  clasped, — and  sobs  are  free 
To  come  instead  of  songs.     "VMiat  do  vou  say, 
Sweet  counsellors,  dear  friends  ?  that  I  should  go 
Back  straightway  to  the  fields  and  gather  more  ? 
Another,  sooth,  may  do  it,  but  not  I  ! 
My  heart  is  very  tired,  my  strength  is  low. 
My  hands  are  full  of  blossoms  plucked  before, 
Held  dead  within  them  tijl  myself  shall  die. 


5 

«■ 


T 


£ngltsh  Sonruts  203 

CCCCI 

TEARS. 

HAXK  God,  bless  God,  all  ye  who  suflter  not  Ei^zabsth 

More  grief  than  ye  can  weep  for.  That  is  well —       Bh.tvmkg 
That  is  light  grie\-ing  !  lighter  none  befell  iSoT^ssi 

Since  Adam  forfeited  the  primal  lot. 
Tears  I  what  are  tears  ?     The  babe  weeps  in  its  cot, 
The  mother  singing  ;  at  her  marriage-bell 
The  bride  weeps,  and  before  the  oracle 
Of  high-faned  hills  the  poet  has  forgot 
Such  moisture  on  his  cheeks.     Thank  God  for  grace, 
Ye  who  weep  only  !     If,  as  some  have  done. 
Ye  grope  tear-blinded  in  a  desert  place 
And  touch  but  tombs, — look  up  !  those  tears  will  run 
Soon  in  long  rivers  down  the  lifted  face, 
And  leave  the  vision  clear  for  stars  and  sun. 


ccccn 
SUBSTITUTION. 

"\  ^  rHEN  some  beloved  voice  that  was  to  you 

Both  sound  and  sweetness,  faileth  suddenly. 
And  silence,  against  which  you  dare  not  cry. 
Aches  round  you  like  a  strong  disease  and  new — 
"WTiat  hope  ?  what  help  ?  what  music  will  undo 
That  sUence  to  your  sense  ?     Not  friendship's  sigh. 
Not  reason's  subtle  count  ;  not  melody 
Of  \-iols,  nor  of  pipes  that  Faunus  blew  ; 
Not  songs  of  poets,  nor  of  nightingales 
^^^lose  hearts  leap  upward  through  the  cypress-trees 
To  the  clear  moon  ;  nor  yet  the  spheric  laws 
Self-chanted,  nor  the  angels'  sweet  All  hails, 
Met  in  the  smile  of  God  :  nay,  none  of  these. 
Speak  Thou,  availing  Christ  ! — and  fill  this  pause. 


204  A  Treasury  of 


CCCCIII 
COMFORT. 

^efRRm^       CPEAK  low  to  me,  my  Saviour,  low  and  sweet 
Browning       *^     From  out  the  hallelujahs,  sweet  and  low, 
1S09— 1861       Lest  I  should  fear  and  fall,  and  miss  Thee  so 
Who  art  not  missed  by  any  that  entreat. 
Speak  to  me  as  to  Marj'  at  Thy  feet  ! 
And  if  no  precious  gums  my  hands  bestow, 
Let  my  tears  drop  like  amber  while  I  go 
In  reach  of  Thy  divinest  voice  complete 
In  humanest  affection — thus,  in  sooth, 
To  lose  the  sense  of  losing.     As  a  child, 
AMiose  song-bird  seeks  the  wood  for  evermore, 
Is  sung  to  in  its  stead  by  mother's  mouth 
Till,  sinking  on  her  breast,  love-reconciled, 
He  sleeps  the  faster  that  he  wept  before. 


cccciv 
PERPLEXED  MUSIC. 

"PXPERIENCE,  like  a  pale  musician,  holds 

■^     A  dulcimer  of  patience  in  his  hand, 

"Whence  harmonies  we  cannot  understand. 

Of  God's  will  in  his  worlds,  the  strain  unfolds 

In  sad,  perplexed  minors  :  deathly  colds 

Fall  on  us  while  we  hear,  and  countermand 

Our  sanguine  heart  back  from  the  fancy-land 

With  nightingales  in  yisionary  wolds. 

We  murmur,  '  Where  is  any  certain  tune 

Or  measured  music  in  such  notes  as  these  ? 

But  angels,  leaning  from  the  golden  seat, 

Are  not  so  minded  ;  their  fine  ear  hath  won 

The  issue  of  completed  cadences, 

And,  smiling  dovvTi  the  stars,  they  whisper — Sweet. 


English  Sonnets  205 


ccccv 
WORK. 


Elizabeth 
Barrett 


"\  "\  rHAT  are  we  set  on  earth  for  ?    Say,  to  toil  ; 

Nor  seek  to  leave  thy  tending  of  the  vines  Browxixg 

For  all  the  heat  o'  the  day,  till  it  declines,  1809— 1861 

And  Death's  mild  curfew  shall  from  work  assoil. 
God  did  anoint  thee  with  his  odorous  oil 
To  wrestle,  not  to  reign  ;  and  He  assigns 
All  thy  tears  over,  like  pure  cr}-stallines, 
For  younger  fellow- workers  of  the  soil 
To  wear  for  amulets.      So  others  shall 
Take  patience,  labour,  to  their  heart  and  hand. 
From  thy  hand  and  thy  heart  and  thy  brave  cheer. 
And  God's  grace  fructify  through  thee  to  all. 
The  least  flower,  with  a  brimming  cup  may  stand, 
And  share  its  dew-drop  ^nth  another  near. 


ccccvi 

FUTURITY. 

A  ND,  O  beloved  voices,  upon  which 
■^  ^     Ours  passionately  call  because  erelong 
Ye  brake  off  in  the  middle  of  that  song 
We  sang  together  softly,  to  enrich 
The  poor  world  with  the  sense  of  love,  and  witch 
The  heart  out  of  things  e^-il, — I  am  strong. 
Knowing  ye  are  not  lost  for  aye  among 
The  hills,  with  last  year's  thrush.     God  keeps  a  niche 
In  Heaven  to  hold  our  idols  :  and  albeit 
He  brake  them  to  our  faces  and  denied 
That  our  close  kisses  should  impair  their  white, 
I  know  we  shall  behold  them  raised,  complete, 
The  dust  swept  from  their  beaut)% — glorified 
New  Memnons  singing  in  the  great  God-light. 


2o6  A  Treastaj  of 

CCCCVII 
WORK  AND  CONTEMPLATION. 

Elizabeth       npHE  woman  singeth  at  her  spinning-wheel 

Barrett  I  •■     ,i     i  i 

Browning         -^      A  pleasant  chant,  Dallad  or  barcarole  ; 

1809-1861       She  thinketh  of  her  song,  upon  the  whole, 
Far  more  than  of  her  flax  ;  and  yet  the  reel 
Is  full,  and  artfully  her  fingers  feel 
With  quick  adjustment,  provident  control, 
The  lines,  too  subtly  twisted  to  unroll. 
Out  to  a  perfect  thread.     I  hence  appeal 
To  the  dear  Christian  church — that  we  may  do 
Our  Father's  business  in  these  temples  mirk. 
Thus  swift  and  steadfast,  thus  intent  and  strong  ; 
While  thus,  apart  from  toil,  our  souls  pursue 
Some  high,  calm,  spheric  tune,  and  prove  our  work 
The  better  for  the  sweetness  of  our  song. 


ccccvni  \ 

I 

FLUSH  OR  FAUN  US.  \ 

■\7^0U  see  this  dog  ;  it  was  but  yesterday  i 

^       I  mused  forgetful  of  his  presence  here  | 

Till  thought  on  thought  drew  downward  tear  on  tear:  ; 

When  from  the  pillow  where  wet-cheeked  I  lay,  ^ 

A  head  as  hairy  as  Faunus  thrust  its  way 
Right  sudden  against  my  face,  two  golden-clear  : 

Great  eyes  astonished  mine,  a  drooping  ear  i 

Did  flap  me  on  either  cheek  to  dry  the  spray  !  j 

I  started  first  as  some  Arcadian  j 

Amazed  by  goatly  god  in  twilight  grove  ;  i 

But  as  the  bearded  vision  closelier  ran 
My  tears  off,  I  knew  Flush,  and  rose  above 
Surprise  and  sadness, — thanking  the  true  Pan 
Who  by  low  creatures  leads  to  heights  of  love. 


English  Sonnets  207 

ccccix 
CHEERFULNESS  TA  UGHT  B  V  REASON. 

I  THINK  we  are  too  ready  with  complaint  Euzabeth 

•'  -t  Barrett 

In  this  fair  world  of  God's.     Had  we  no  hope  Browning 

Indeed  beyond  the  zenith  and  the  slope  1809— 1861 

Of  yon  grey  blank  of  sky,  we  might  grow  faint 

To  muse  upon  eternity's  constraint 

Round  our  aspirant  souls  ;  but  since  the  scope 

Must  widen  early,  is  it  well  to  droop, 

For  a  few  days  consumed  in  loss  and  taint  ? 

O  pusillanimous  heart,  be  comforted 

And,  like  a  cheerful  traveller,  take  the  road. 

Singing  beside  the  hedge.     What  if  the  bread 

Be  bitter  in  thine  inn,  and  thou  unshod 

To  meet  the  flints  ?     At  least  it  may  be  said, 

*  Because  the  way  is  shorty  I  thank  thee,  God.' 


ccccx 
ADEQUACY. 

TVrOW,  by  the  verdure  on  thy  thousand  hills. 
Beloved  England,  doth  the  earth  appear 
Quite  good  enough  for  men  to  overbear 
The  will  of  God  in,  with  rebellious  wills  ! 
We  cannot  say  the  morning-sun  fulfils 
Ingloriously  its  course,  nor  that  the  clear 
Strong  stars  without  significance  insphere 
Our  habitation  :  we,  meantime,  our  ills 
Heap  up  against  this  good  and  lift  a  cry 
Against  this  work-day  world,  this  ill-spread  feast, 
As  if  ourselves  were  better  certainly 
Than  what  we  come  to.     Maker  and  High  Priest, 
I  ask  thee  not  my  joys  to  multiply, — 
Only  to  make  me  worthier  of  the  least. 


2o8  A   Treasury  of 


ccccxi  1 
THE  PROSPECT. 

E™^ETO       TV  /T  ETHINKS  we  do  as  fretful  children  do,  i 

Browning        -'-^-*-       Leaning  their  faces  on  the  window-pane  i 

1809— 1861       To  sigh  the  glass  dim  with  their  own  breath's  stain,  i 

And  shut  the  sky  and  landscape  from  their  view  :  \ 

And  thus,  alas,  since  God  the  Maker  drew  ] 

A  mystic  separation  'twixt  those  twain,  j 
The  life  beyond  us,  and  our  souls  in  pain, 

We  miss  the  prospect  which  we  are  called  unto  ; 

By  grief  we  are  fools  to  use.     Be  still  and  strong,  1 

O  man,  my  brother  !  hold  thy  sobbing  breath,  \ 

And  keep  thy  soul's  large  window  pure  from  wrong  ;  , 
That  so,  as  life's  appointment  issueth, 
Thy  vision  may  be  clear  to  watch  along 

The  sunset  consummation-lights  of  death.  ' 


ccccxii 
SONNETS  FROM  THE  PORTUGUESE. 


I 


T  THOUGHT  once  how  Theocritus  had  sung 

Of  the  sweet  years,  the  dear  and  wished-for  years, 
Who  each  one  in  a  gracious  hand  appears 
To  bear  a  gift  for  mortals,  old  or  young  : 
And,  as  I  mused  it  in  his  antique  tongue, 
I  saw,  in  gradual  vision  through  my  tears, 
The  sweet,  sad  years,  the  melancholy  years, 
Those  of  my  own  life,  who  by  turns  had  flung 
A  shadow  across  me.     Straightway  I  was  'ware. 
So  weeping,  how  a  mystic  shape  did  move 
Behind  me,  and  drew  me  backward  by  the  hair  ; 
And  a  voice  said  in  mastery,  while  I  strove, — 
*  Guess  now  who  holds  thee  ? ' — '  Death,'  I  said.  But, 

there, 
The  silver  answer  rang, — '  Not  Death,  but  Love.' 


I 


English  Sonnets  209 

CCCCXIII 


F  thou  must  love  me,  let  it  be  for  nought  Elizabeth 

Barrett 

Except  for  love  s  sake  only.     Do  not  say  browning 

*  I  love  her  for  her  smile — her  look — her  way  1809—1861 

Of  speaking  gently, — for  a  trick  of  thought 
That  falls  in  well  with  mine,  and  certes  brought 
A  sense  of  pleasant  ease  on  such  a  day  ; ' — 
For  these  things  in  themselves,  Beloved,  may 
Be  changed,  or  change  for  thee, — and  love,  so  wrought, 
May  be  unwrought  so.     Neither  love  me  for 
Thine  own  dear  pity's  wiping  my  cheeks  dry, — 
A  creature  might  forget  to  weep,  who  bore 
Thy  comfort  long,  and  lose  thy  love  thereby  ! 
But  love  me  for  love's  sake,  that  evermore 
Thou  may'st  love  on,  through  love's  eternity. 


ccccxiv 


A  CCUSE  me  not,  beseech  thee,  that  I  wear 

Too  calm  and  sad  a  face  in  front  of  thine  ; 
For  we  two  look  two  ways,  and  cannot  shine 
With  the  same  sunlight  on  our  brow  and  hair. 
On  me  thou  lookest  with  no  doubting  care. 
As  on  a  bee  shut  in  a  crystalline  ; 
Since  sorrow  hath  shut  me  safe  in  love's  divine, 
And  to  spread  wing  and  fly  in  the  outer  air 
Were  most  impossible  failure,  if  I  strove 
To  fail  so.     But  I  look  on  thee — on  thee — 
Beholding,  besides  love,  the  end  of  love, 
Hearing  oblivion  beyond  memory  ; 
As  one  who  sits  and  gazes  from  above, 
Over  the  rivers  to  the  bitter  sea. 


2IO  A  Treasury  of 

ccccxv    . 
SONNETS  FROM    THE   PORTUGUESE. 

4 

e™eth       J  NEVER  gave  a  lock  of  hair  away 
Browning       A     To  a  man,  Dcarcst,  except  this  to  thee, 
1809— 1861       Which  now  upon  my  fingers  thoughtfully 
I  ring  out  to  the  full  brown  length  and  say 
'  Take  it.'     My  day  of  youth  went  yesterday ; 
My  hair  no  longer  bounds  to  my  foot's  glee, 
Nor  plant  I  it  from  rose  or  myrtle-tree, 
As  girls  do,  any  more  :    it  only  may 
Now  shade  on  two  pale  cheeks  the  mark  of  tears, 
Taught  drooping  from  the  head  that  hangs  aside 
Through   sorrow's   trick.     I    thought    the    funeral- 
shears 
Would  take  this  first,  but  Love  is  justified, — 
Take  it  thou, — finding  pure,  from  all  those  years, 
The  kiss  my  mother  left  here  when  she  died. 

ccccxvi 

5 

TS  it  indeed  so  ?     If  I  lay  here  dead, 

Wouldst  thou  miss  any  life  in  losing  mine  ? 
And  would  the  sun  for  thee  more  coldly  shine 
Because  of  grave-damps  falling  round  my  head  ? 
I  marvelled,  my  Beloved,  when  I  read 
Thy  thought  so  in  the  letter.     I  am  thine — 
But  .    .  so  much  to  thee  ?     Can  I  pour  thy  wine 
While  my  hands  tremble  ?     Then  my  soul,  instead 
Of  dreams  of  death,  resumes  life's  lower  range. 
Then,  love  me,  Love  !  look  on  me — breathe  on  me  ! 
As  brighter  ladies  do  not  count  it  strange, 
For  love,  to  give  up  acres  and  degree, 
I  yield  the  grave  for  thy  sake,  and  exchange 
My  near  sweet  view  of  Heaven  for  earth  with  thee  ! 


English  Sonnets  211 


CCCCXVII 
6 


IF  I  leave  all  for  thee,  wilt  thou  exchange  Elizabeth 

P  Barrett 

And  be  all  to  me  ?     Shall  I  never  miss  Bkowning 

Home-talk  and  blessing  and  the  common  kiss  ■  1809— 1861 

That  comes  to  each  in  turn,  nor  count  it  strange, 

When  I  look  up,  to  drop  on  a  new  range 

Of  walls  and  floors,  another  home  than  this  ? 

Nay,  wilt  thou  fill  that  place  by  me  which  is 

Filled  by  dead  eyes  too  tender  to  know  change  ? 

That's  hardest.     If  to  conquer  love,  has  tried. 

To  conquer  grief,  tries  more,  as  all  things  prove  ; 

For  grief  indeed  is  love  and  grief  beside. 

Alas,  I  have  grieved  so  I  am  hard  to  love. 

Yet  love  me — wilt  thou  ?     Open  thine  heart  wide, 

And  fold  within  the  wet  wings  of  thy  dove. 


ccccxvm  j 

! 

TTOW  do  I  love  thee  ?     Let  me  count  the  ways.  ■ 

I  love  thee  to  the  depth  and  breadth  and  height 
My  soul  can  reach,  when  feeling  out  of  sight  ; 

For  the  ends  of  Being  and  ideal  Grace. 

I  love  thee  to  the  level  of  everyday's  1 

Most  quiet  need,  by  sun  and  candlelight.  ; 

I  love  thee  freely,  as  men  strive  for  Right  ; 

I  love  thee  purely,  as  they  turn  from  Praise  ;  ; 

I  love  thee  with  the  passion  put  to  use  1 

In  my  old  griefs,  and  with  my  childhood's  faith.  j 

I  love  thee  with  a  love  I  seemed  to  lose  i 

With  my  lost  saints, — I  love  thee  with  the  breath, 
Smiles,  tears,  of  all  my  life  ! — and,  if  God  choose, 
I  shall  but  love  thee  better  after  death. 


212  A  Treasury   of  | 

ccccxix  . 

GLASTONBURY.  ^ 

Henry  alford   (~\^  thy  green  marge,  thou  vale  of  Avalon,  | 

181^871       ^^     Not  for  that  thou  art  crowned  with  ancient  | 

towers  I 

And  shafts  and  clustered  pillars  many  a  one,  ; 

Love  I  to  dream  away  the  sunny  hours  ; 
Not  for  that  here  in  charmed  slumber  lie 
The  holy  rehcs  of  that  British  king 
Who  was  the  flower  of  knightly  chivalry, 
Do  I  stand  blest  past  power  of  uttering  ;— 
But  for  that  on  thy  cowslip-sprinkled  sod  ! 

Alit  of  old  the  olive-bearing  bird, 
Meek  messenger  of  purchased  peace  with  God  ; 
And  the  first  hymns  that  Britain  ever  heard 
Arose,  the  low  preluding  melodies 
To  the  sweetest  anthem  that  hath  reached  the  skies. 


ccccxx 

RISE,  said  the  Master,  come  unto  the  feast  : — 
She  heard  the  call  and  rose  with  willing  feet  ; 
But  thinking  it  not  otherwise  than  meet 
For  such  a  bidding  to  put  on  her  best, 
She  is  gone  from  us  for  a  few  short  hours 
Into  her  bridal  closet,  there  to  wait 
For  the  unfolding  of  the  palace  gate. 
That  gives  her  entrance  to  the  blissful  bowers. 
We  have  not  seen  her  yet,  though  we  have  been 
Full  often  to  her  chamber  door,  and  oft 
Have  listened  underneath  the  postern  green, 
And  laid  fresh  flowers,  and  whispered  short  and  soft ; 
But  she  hath  made  no  answer  ;  and  the  day 
From  the  clear  west  is  fading  fast  away. 


English  Sonnets  213 

ccccxxi 

/^H  blessing  and  delight  of  my  young  heart,  Arthur  Henry 

^^^     Maiden,  who  was  so  lovely  and  so  pure,  — 

.       ,  .  ,  1811— 1833 

I  know  not  in  what  region  now  thou  art, 

Or  whom  thy  gentle  eyes  in  joy  assure. 

Not  the  old  hills  on  which  we  gazed  together, 

Not  the  old  faces  which  we  both  did  love, 

Not  the  old  books  whence  knowledge  we  did  gather — 

Not  these,  but  others  now  thy  fancies  move. 

I  would  I  knew  thy  present  hopes  and  fears, 

All  thy  companions,  with  their  pleasant  talk. 

And  the  clear  aspect  which  thy  dwelling  wears  ; 

So,  though  in  body  absent,  I  might  walk 

With  thee  in  thought  and  feeling,  till  thy  mood 

Did  sanctify  mine  own  to  peerless  good. 


CCCCXXII 

WRITTEN  IN  EDINBURGH. 

"PVEN  thus,  methinks,  a  city  reared  should  be, 

■^     Yea,  an  imperial  city,  that  might  hold 

Five  times  a  hundred  noble  towns  in  fee, 

And  either  with  their  might  of  Babel  old, 

Or  the  rich  Roman  pomp  of  empery 

Might  stand  compare,  highest  in  arts  enrolled. 

Highest  in  arms  ;  brave  tenement  for  the  free, 

Who  never  crouch  to  thrones,  or  sin  for  gold. 

Thus  should  her  towers  be  raised — with  vicinage 

Of  clear  bold  hills,  that  curve  her  very  streets, 

As  if  to  vindicate  'mid  choicest  seats 

Of  art,  abiding  Nature's  majesty  ; 

And  the  broad  sea  beyond,  in  calm  or  rage 

Chainless  aUke,  and  teaching  Liberty. 


214  A  Treasury  of 

CCCCXXIII 


^^^nl^u''^''    A  ^^^  •  ^^^^  sometimes  even  a  duteous  life, 
3-  If  uninspired  by  love,  and  love-born  joy, 

Grows  fevered  in  the  world's  unholy  strife, 
And  sinks  destroyed  by  that  it  would  destroy  ! 
Beloved,  from  the  boisterous  deeds  that  fill 
The  measure  up  of  this  unquiet  time, 
The  dull  monotonies  of  Faction's  chime, 
And  irrepressible  thoughts  foreboding  ill, 
I  turn  to  thee  as  to  a  heaven  apart — 
Oh  !  not  apart,  not  distant,  near  me  ever. 
So  near  my  soul  that  nothing  can  thee  sever  ! 
How  shall  I  fear,  knowing  there  is  for  me 
A  city  of  refuge,  builded  pleasantly 
Within  the  silent  places  of  the  heart  ? 


ccccxxiv 

T   ADY,  I  bid  thee  to  a  sunny  dome 
■^^     Ringing  with  echoes  of  Italian  song  : 
Henceforth  to  thee  these  magic  halls  belong, 
And  all  the  pleasant  place  is  like  a  home. 
Hark,  on  the  right  with  full  piano  tone 
Old  Dante's  voice  encircles  all  the  air  ; 
Hark  yet  again,  like  flute-tones  mingling  rare, 
Comes  the  keen  sweetness  of  Petrarca's  moan. 
Pass  thou  the  lintel  freely  :  without  fear 
Feast  on  the  music  :  I  do  better  know  thee. 
Than  to  suspect  this  pleasure  thou  dost  owe  me 
Will  wrong  thy  gentle  spirit,  or  make  less  dear 
That  element  whence  thou  must  draw  thy  life, — 
An  English  maiden  and  an  English  wife. 


English  Sonnets  215 

ccccxxv 

OPEED  ye,  warm  hours,  along  the  appointed  path,    ^^1"^'''' 

Speed,  though  ye  bring  but  pain,  slow  pain  to  me;       181^833 
I  will  not  much  bemoan  your  heavy  wrath, 
So  ye  will  make  my  lady  glad  and  free. 
AVhat  is't  that  I  must  here  confined  be, 
If  she  may  roam  the  summer's  sweets  among, 
See  the  full-cupped  flower,  the  laden  tree, 
Hear  from  deep  groves  the  thousand-voiced  song  ? 
Sometimes  in  that  still  chamber  will  she  sit 
Trim-ranged  with  books,  and  cool  with  dusky  blinds 
That  keep  the  moon  out,  there,  as  seemed  fit, 
To  sing,  or  play,  or  read — what  sweet  hope  finds 
Way  to  my  heart  ?  perchance  some  verse  of  mine — 
O  happy  I !  speed  on,  ye  hours  divine  ! 


ccccxxvi 

'T'HE  garden  trees  are  busy  with  the  shower 

That  fell  ere  sunset  :  now  methinks  they  talk, 
Lowly  and  sweetly  as  befits  the  hour. 
One  to  another  down  the  grassy  walk. 
Hark  the  laburnum  from  his  opening  flower 
This  cherry-creeper  greets  in  whisper  light. 
While  the  grim  fir,  rejoicing  in  the  night, 
Hoarse  mutters  to  the  murmuring  sycamore. 
What  shall  I  deem  their  converse  ?     Would  they  hail 
The  wild  grey  light  that  fronts  yon  massive  cloud. 
Or  the  half-bow,  rising  like  pillared  fire  ? 
Or  are  they  sighing  faintly  for  desire 
That  with  May  dawn  their  leaves  may  be  o'erflowed. 
And  dews  about  their  feet  may  never  fail  ? 


2i6  A  Treasury  of  . 

CCCCXXVII 

THE  FOUR  RELIGIOUS  HEATHENS. 

I 

HE  RO  DO  TUS. 

'  CONVERSE   IN   FEAR,   DURING   THE  TIME  OF   YOUR   SOJOURNING   HERE.' 

Frederick       T  T  E  was  a  mild  old  man,  and  cherished  much 

William  |     |  ' 

Faber  ■■-  -*-     The  weight  dark  Egypt  on  his  spirit  laid  ; 

1814— 1863       And  with  a  sinuous  eloquence  would  touch 
For  ever  at  that  haven  of  the  dead. 
Single  romantic  words  by  him  were  thrown, 
As  types,  on  men  and  places,  with  a  power 
Like  that  of  shifting  sunlight  after  shower 
Kindling  the  cones  of  hills  and  journeying  on. 
He  feared  the  gods  and  heroes,  and  spake  low. 
That  Echo  might  not  hear  in  her  light  room  : 
He  was  a  dweller  underground  ;  for  gloom 
Fitted  old  heathen  goodness  more  than  glow  ; 
And,  where  love  was  not,  faith  might  gather  mirth 
From  ore  that  glistened  in  pale  beds  of  earth. 

CCCCXXVIII 

2 

N I  CI  A  S  . 

'IN   ALL  THESE  THINGS  JOB   SINNED   NOT   BY    HIS    LIPS,    NOR   SPOKE   HE 
ANY   FOOLISH   THINGS   AGAINST   GOD.' 

TVT  URSLING  of  heathen  fear  !  thy  woful  being, 

Was  steeped  in  gentleness  by  long  disease. 
Though  round  thine  awestruck  mind  were  ever  fleeing 
Omens,  and  signs,  and  direful  presages. 
One  might  believe  in  frames  so  gently  stern 
Some  Christian  thoughts  before  their  time  did  burn. 
Sadness  was  unto  thee  for  love  ;  thy  spirit 
Rose  loftily  like  some  hard-featured  stone, 
Which  summer  sunbeam  never  makes  its  throne. 
E'en  while  it  fills  the  skirts  of  vapour  near  it. 
One  wert  thou,  Nicias  !  of  the  few  who  urge 
Their  stricken  souls  where  far-seen  Death  doth  hover 
In  vision  on  them,  nor  may  they  diverge 
From  the  black  line  his  chilling  shadows  cover. 


English  Sonnets  217 

CCCCXXIX 
3 

so  CR  A  T  E  S . 

'  OF     MAKING      MANY      BOOKS     THERE    IS    NO     END  ;     AND     MUCH     STUDY    IS 
AN    AFFLICTION    OF    THE    FLESH.' 

THOU,  mighty  Heathen,  wert  not^o  bereft  Frederick 

'         o      J  William 

Of  heavenly  helps  to  thy  great-hearted  deeds,         ^'aber 

That  thou  shouldst  dig  for  truths  in  broken  creeds,       1S14— 1S63 

'Mid  the  loose  sands  of  four  old  empires  left. 

Motions  and  shadows  dimly  glowing  fell 

On  thy  broad  soul  from  forms  invisible. 

With  its  plain  grandeur,  simple,  calm,  and  free, 

What  wonder  was  it  that  thy  life  should  merit 

Sparkles  of  grace,  and  angel  ministry. 

With  jealous  glimpses  of  the  world  of  spirit  ? 

Greatest  and  best  in  this — that  thy  pure  mind, 

Upon  its  saving  mission  all  intent,  .  1 

Scorned  the  untruth  of  leaving  books  behind,  i 

To  claim  for  thine  what  through  thy  lips  was  sent.  ' 

ccccxxx  '  "".  I 

4  ' 

SENECA. 

'when    peter    came,    his    SHAOOW    AT   THE     LEAST    MIGHT    OVERSHADOW  ; 

ANY    OF    THEM.'  ,j 

/^FT  in  the  crowd  and  crossings  of  old  Rome  ' 

^-^^     The  Christ-like  shadow  of  the  gifted  Paul,  j 

As  he  looked  forth  betimes  from  his  hired  home,  I 

Might  at  this  Gentile's  hurrying  footsteps  fall,  \ 

When,  from  his  mournings  in  the  Caesar's  hall,  '  j 

Spurred  by  great  thoughts,  the  troubled  sage  might  come.  1 

Some  balmy  truths  most  surely  did  he  borrow  ; 

From  the  sweet  neighbourhood  of  Christ,  to  bring  j 

The  harsh,  hard  waters  of  his  heathen  spring  j 

In  softening  ducts  o'er  wastes  of  pagan  sorrow.  \ 

As  slips  of  green  from  fertile  confines  shoot  \ 

Into  the  tracts  of  sand,  so  heathen  duty  \ 
Caught  from  his  guided  pen  a  cold,  bright  beauty, 

Where  flowers  might  all  but  blossom  into  fruit.  \ 


2l8 


A  Treasu7-y  of 


Frederick 

%VlLUAM 

Faber 
1814— 1863 


CCCCXXXI 
ON  THE  RAMPARTS  A  T  ANGOULEME. 

"A  "X  THY  art  thou  speechless,  O  thou  setting  Sun  ? 
Speak  ^to  this  earth,  speak  to  this  Hstening 
scene, 
Where  Charente  flows  among  the  meadows  green, 
And  in  his  gilded  waters,  one  by  one. 
The  inverted  minarets  of  poplar  quake 
With  expectation,  until  thou  shalt  break 
The  intolerable  silence.      See  !  he  sinks 
Without  a  word  ;   and  his  ensanguined  bier 
Is  vacant  in  the  west,  while  far  and  near 
Behold  !  each  coward  shadow  eastward  shrinks. 
Thou  dost  not  strive,  O  sun,  nor  dost  thou  cry 
Amid  thy  cloud-built  streets  ;,  but  meek  and  still 
Thou  dost  the  type  of  Jesus  best  fulfil, 
A  noiseless  revelation  in  the  sky. 


John  Forster 
1812— 1876 


CCCCXXXII 
TO   CHARLES  DICKENS. 

/'^ENIUS  and  its  rewards  are  briefly  told  : 
^^     A  liberal  nature  and  a  niggard  doom, 
A  difficult  journey  to  a  splendid  tomb. 
New-writ,  nor  lightly  weighed,  that  story  old 
In  gentle  Goldsmith's  life  I  here  unfold  : 
Through  other  than  lone  wild  or  desert-gloom. 
In  its  mere  joy  and  pain,  its  blight  and  bloom. 
Adventurous.     Come  with  me  and  behold, 
O  friend  with  heart  as  gentle  for  distress. 
As  resolute  with  fine  wise  thoughts  to  bind 
The  happiest  to  the  unhappiest  of  our  kind, 
That  there  is  fiercer  crowded  misery 
In  garret-toil  and  London  loneliness 
Than  in  cruel  islands  'mid  the  far-off  sea. 


T 


English  Sonnets  219 

CCCCXXXIII 

HOUGH  to  the  vilest  things  beneath  the  moon     Arthur  Hugh 

°  Clough 


For  poor  Ease'  sake  I  give  away  my  heart, 
And  for  the  moment's  sympathy  let  part 
My  sight  and  sense  of  truth,  Thy  precious  boon, 
My  painful  earnings,  lost,  all  lost,  as  soon 
Almost  as  gained  ;   and  though  aside  I  start, 
Belie  Thee  daily,   hourly, — still  Thou  art. 
Art  surely  as  in  heaven  the  sun  at  noon : 
How  much  soe'er  I  sin,  whate'er  I  do 
Of  evil,  still  the  sky  above  is  blue, 
The  stars  look  down  in  beauty  as  before  :  . 
Is  it  enough  to  walk  as  best  we  may, 
To  walk,  and,  sighing,  dream  of  that  blest  day 
When  ill  we  cannot  quell  shall  be  ng  more  ? 


ccccxxxiv 
TO  THE  AUTHORESS  OF  "  OUR   VILLAGE." 


T 


Well  pleased  to  recognize  in  lowliest  shade 
Some  glimmer  of  its  parent  beam,  and  made 
By  daily  draughts  of  brightness,  inly  bright. 
The  taste  severe,  yet  graceful,  trained  aright 
In  classic  depth  and  clearness,  and  repaid 
By  thanks  and  honour  from  the  wise  and  staid, 
By  pleasant  skill  to  blame,  and  yet  delight. 
And  high  communion  with  the  eloquent  throng 
Of  those  who  purified  our  speech  and  song — ■ 
All  these  are  yours.     The  same  examples  lure 
You  in  each  woodland,  me  on  breezy  moor — 
With  kindred  aim  the  same  sweet  path  along. 
To  knit  in  loving  knowledge  rich  and  poor. 


1S19 — 1861 


HE  single  eye,  the  daughter  of  the  light  ;  Charles 

rs.IXGSLEY 


1819 — 1875 


2  20  A   Treasury  of 

ccccxxxv 
William         T    IKE  a  musician  that  with  flying  finger 

Caldwell  I  .  ^       o         o 

RoscoE  Startles  the  voice  of  some  new  instrument, 

1823— 1859       And,  though  he  know  that  in  one  string  are  blent 
All  its  extremes  of  sound,  yet  still  doth  linger 
Among  the  lighter  threads,  fearing  to  start 
The  deep  soul  of  that  one  melodious  wire, 
Lest  it,  unanswering,  dash  his  high  desire. 
And  spoil  the  hopes  of  his  expectant  heart  ; — 
Thus,  with  my  mistress  oft  conversing,  I 
Stir  every  lighter  theme  with  careless  voice, 
Gathering  sweet  music  and  celestial  joys 
From  the  harmonious  soul  o'er  which  I  fly  ; 
Yet  o'er  the  one  deep  master-chord  I  hover, 
And  dare  not  stoop,  fearing  to  tell — I  love  her. 


ccccxxxvi 

TO  MY  MOTHER. 

A  S  winter,  in  some  mild  autumnal  days. 

Breathes  such  an  air  as  youngest  spring  discloses. 
So  age  in  thee  renews  an  infant's  grace, 
And  clothes  thy  cheek  in  soft  November  roses. 
Time  hath  made  friends  with  Beauty  in  thy  face. 
And,  since  the  wheeling  Fates  must  be  obeyed, 
White  rime  upon  thy  gracious  head  he  lays, 
But  whispers  gently  not  to  be  afraid  ; 
And  tenderly,  like  one  that  leads  the  blind, 
He  soothes  thy  lingering  footsteps  to  the  gate. 
While  that  great  Angel,  who  there  keeps  his  state. 
Smiles  to  behold  with  what  slow  feet  he  moves. 
Move  slower,  gentlier  yet,  O  Time  !  or  find 
A  way  to  fix  her  here,  bound  by  our  filial  loves. 


English  Sonnets  221 


CCCCXXXVII 
TO  A  FRIEND. 


William 
Caldwell 


O  AD  soul,  whom  God,  resuming  what  Hq  gave, 

*^     Medicines  with  bitter  anguish  of  the  tomb,  Roscoe 

Cease  to  oppress  the  portals  of  the  grave,  1823— 1859 

And  strain  thy  aching  sight  across  the  gloom. 

The  surged  Atlantic's  winter-beaten  wave 

Shall  sooner  pierce  the  purpose  of  the  wind 

Than  thy  storm-tossed  and  heavy-swelling  mind 

Grasp  the  full  import  of  his  means  to  save. 

Through  the  dark  night  lie  still ;  God's  faithful  grace 

Lies  hid,  like  morning,  underneath  the  sea. 

Let  thy  slow  hours  roll,  like  these  weary  stars,  * 

Down  to  the  level  ocean  patiently  ; 

Till  his  loved  hand  shall  touch  the  Eastern  bars. 

And  his  full  glory  shine  upon  thy  face. 


CCCCXXXVIII 

TO  THE  REV.   JOHN  HAMILTON  THOM. 

IVr  ATURE'S  least  worthy  growths  have  quickest  spring. 

And  soonest  answering  service  readiest  meed, 
And  undiscerning  glory's  shining  wing 
Lights  earliest  on  an  ill-deserving  head. 
Winter  o'er  autumn-scattered  wheat  doth  fling 
A  white  oblivion  that  keeps  warm  the  seed  ; 
And  wisest  thought  needs  deepest  burying, 
Before  its  ripe  effect  begins  to  breed. 
Therefore,  O  spiritual  seedsman,  cast 
With  unregretful  hand  thy  rich  grain  forth, 
Nor  think  thy  word's  regenerating  birth 
Dead,  that  so  long  lies  locked  in  human  breast. 
Time,  slow  to  foster  things  of  lesser  worth, 
Broods  o'er  thy  work,  and  God  permits  no  waste. 


222  A  Treasury  of 


William 
Caldwell 


CCCCXXXIX 
DA  YBREAK  IN  FEBRUARY. 


/^VER  the  ground  white  snow,  and  in  the  air 
Roscoe"       ^~^     Silence.     The  stars,  Hke  lamps  soon  to  expire 
1823—1859       Gleam  tremblingly  ;  serene  and  heavenly  fair, 
The  eastern  hanging  crescent  climbeth  higher. 
See,  purple  on  the  azure  softly  steals, 
And  Morning,  faintly  touched  with  quivering  fire; 
Leans  on  the  frosty  summits  of  the  hills, 
Like  a  young  girl  over  her  hoary  sire. 
Oh,  such  a  dawning  over  me  has  come, — 
The  daybreak  of  thy  purity  and  love  ; — 
♦  The  sadness  of  the  never-satiate  tomb 

Thy  countenance  hath  power  to  remove  ; 

And  from  the  sepulchre  of  Hope  thy  palm 

Can  roll  the  stone,  and  raise  her  bright  and  calm. 


CCCCXL 

'X'HE  bubble  of  the  silver-springing  waves, 

Castalian  music,  and  that  flattering  sound, 
Low  rustling  of  the  loved  Apollian  leaves. 
With  which  my  youthful  hair  was  to  be  crowned. 
Grow  dimmer  in  my  ears  ;  while  Beauty  grieves 
Over  her  votary,  less  frequent  found  ; 
And,  not  untouched  by  storms,  my  life-boat  heaves 
Through  the  splashed  ocean-waters,  outward  bound. 
And  as  the  leaning  mariner,  his  hand 
Clasped  on  his  ear,  stri\tes  trembling  to  reclaim 
Some  loved  lost  echo  from  the  fleeting  strand, 
So  lean  I  back  to  the  poetic  land  ; 
And  in  my  heart  a  sound,  a  voice,  a  name 
Hangs,  as  above  the  lamp  hangs  the  expiring  flame. 


R 


English  Sonnets  223 

CCCCXLI 
BY  THE  SEA-SIDE. 
UN  in,  glad  waves,  scooped  in  transparent  shells,      dJummond 


Which  catch  soft  lights  of  emerald  ere  they  break;         nui<Ns 
Let  the  small  ripple  fret  the  sand,  and  make  1823— 1864 

The  faintest  chime  of  music,  such  as  dwells 
Far  down  within  the  sea-conch's  murmuring  cells, 
While,  hovering  o'er  the  spray,  the  white  birds  wet 
Their  wings,  and  shouting  fishers  draw  the  net  i 

To  land,  and  far  sails  glitter  on  the  swells.  i 

'Tis  bliss  to  rest,  the  while  these  soft  blue  skies  i 

Breathe  over  earth  their  benison  of  peace,  1 

To  feel  these  lowly  forms  enchant  the  eyes,  ^  : 

And  grow  into  .the  mind  by  slow  degrees,  ; 

Till,  breathless  as  a  woodland  pool,  it  lies  1 

And  sleeps  above  its  sleeping  images. 


CCCCXLII 

'  omens: 

A  yT  ETHINKS  the  innumerable  eyes  of  ours,  Sydney  Dobell 

That  must  untimely  close  in  endless  night,  1824— 1874 

Take  in  one  sum  their  natural  due  of  light : 
Feathered  like  summer  birds,  their  unlived  hours 
Sing  to  them  :  at  their  prison  pitying  flowers 
Push  through  the  bars  a  Future  red  and  white, 
Purple  and  gold  :  for  them,  for  them,  yon  bright 
Star,  as  an  eye,  exstils  and  fills,  and  pours 
Its  tear,  and  fills  and  weeps,  to  fill  and  weep  : 
For  them  that  Moon  from  her  wild  couch  on  high 
Now  stretches  arms  that  wooed  Endymion, 
Now  swooning  back  against  the  sky  stares  down 
Like  some  white  mask  of  ancient  tragedy, 
With  orbless  lids  that  neither  wake  nor  sleep. 


224  -^  Treasury  of 

CCCCXLIII 

HOME,  IN  WAR-TIME. 

Sydney  Dobell    OHE  tumcd  the  fair  page  with  her  fairer  hand — 
182^874        ^     More  fair  and  frail  than  it  Avas  wont  to  be  ; 
O'er  each  remembered  thing  he  loved  to  see 
She  lingered,  and  as  with  a  fairy's  wand 
Enchanted  it  to  order.     Oft  she  fanned 
New  motes  into  the  sun  ;  and  as  a  bee 
Sings  through  a  brake  of  bells,  so  murmured  she, 
And  so  her  patient  love  did  understand 
The  reliquary  room.     Upon  the  sill 
She  fed  his  favourite  bird.     '  Ah,  Robin,  sing  ! 
He  loves  thee.'     Then  she  touches  a  sweet  string 
Of  soft  recall,  and  towards  the  Eastern  hill 
Smiles  all  her  soul — for  him  who  cannot  hear 
The  raven  croaking  at  his  carrion  ear. 


CCCCXLIV 
THE  ARMY  SURGEON. 

/^VER  that  breathing  waste  of  friends  and  foes, 

^^     The  wounded  and  the  dying,  hour  by  hour, 

In  will  a  thousand,  yet  but  one  in  power. 

He  labours  through  the  red  and  groaning  day. 

The  fearful  moorland  where  the  myriads  lay 

Moved  as  a  moving  field  of  mangled  worms. 

And  as  a  raw  brood,  orphaned  in  the  storms, 

Thrust  up  their  heads  if  the  wind  bend  a  spray 

Above  them,  but  when  the  bare  branch  performs 

No  sweet  parental  office,  sink  away 

With  helpless  chirp  of  woe, — so,  as  he  goes, 

Around  his  feet  in  clamorous  agony 

They  rise  and  fall  ;  and  all  the  seething  plain 

Bubbles  a  cauldron  vast  of  many-coloured  pain. 


English  Sonnets  225 

CCCCXLV 
AMERICA. 

"XT OR  force  nor  fraud  shall  sunder  us  !     Oh  ye        Sydney  Dobell 
-^  ^      Who  north  or  south,  on  east  or  western  land,        1824—1874 
Native  to  noble  sounds,  say  truth  for  truth, 
Freedom  for  freedom,  love  for  love,  and  God 
For  God  ;  Oh  ye  who  in  eternal  youth 
Speak  with  a  living  and  creative  flood 
This  universal  English,  and  do  stand 
Its  breathing  book  ;  live  worthy  of  that  grand 
Heroic  utterance — parted,  yet  a  whole. 
Far,  yet  unsevered, — children  brave  and  free 
Of  the  great  mother-tongue,  and  ye  shall  be 
Lords  of  an  empire  wide  as  Shakspeare's  soul, 
Sublime  as  Milton's  immemorial  theme. 
And  rich  as  Chaucer's  speech,  aixi  fair  as  Spenser's 
dream. 


CCCCXLVI  ; 

TO  A  FRIEND  IN  BEREA  VEMENT.  I 

I 

IVTO  comfort,  nay,  no  comfort.     Yet  would  I  j 

In  Sorrow's  cause  with  Sorrow  intercede  \ 

Burst  not  the  great  heart, — this  is  all  I  plead  ; 
Ah,  sentence  it  to  suffer,  not  to  die. 
'  Comfort  ? '     If  Jesus  wept  at  Bethany — 
That  doze  and  nap  of  Death — how  may  we  bleed 
Who  watch  the  long  sleep  that  is  sleep  indeed ! 
Pointing  to  Heaven  I  but  remind  you  why 
On  earth  you  still  must  mourn.     He  who,  being  bold 
For  life-to-come,  is  false  to  the  past  sweet 
Of  mortal  life,  hath  killed  the  world  above. 
For  why  to  live  again  if  not  to  meet  ? 
And  why  to  meet  if  not  to  meet  in  love  ?  , 
And  why  in  love  if  not  in  that  dear  love  of  old  ? 
p 


226 


A  Treasury  of 


Mortimer 

Collins 

1827 — 1876 


CCCCXLVII 
CA  TULL  US. 

OTUDENT  who  weariest  o'er  syntactic  rules, 

*^     Prosodial  guesses,  etymons  profound, 

The  crabbed  thorns  that  grow  on  classic  ground, 

Cacophonous  jargon  of  the  grammar  schools. 

The  pedagogue's  inevitable  tools 

To  interpret  ancient  verse, — yet  gaze  around 

On  English  woodlands  ;  wander  where  abound 

Calm-gliding  rivers,  dusky  forest-pools 

Where  the  deer  drink  ;  and  verily  believe 

That  this  Catullus,  when  by  Sirmio 

His  pinnace  flashed  along  the  Lydian  Lake, 

Thoughts  from  immortal  Nature  did  receive 

Fresh  as  the  winds  are,  perfect  as  the  glow 

Of  the  Orient  hills  when  Morning  doth  awake. 


Julian  Fane 
1827 — 1870 


CCCCXLVIII 
AD    MA  THEM. 

MARCH    13,    1862. 

/^FT  in  the  after-days,  when  thou  and  I 
^-^^     Have  fallen  from  the  scope  of  human  view, 
When,  both  together,  under  the  sweet  sky 
We  sleep  beneath  the  daisies  and  the  dew. 
Men  will  recall  thy  gracious  presence  bland. 
Conning  the  pictured  sweetness  of  thy  face  ; 
Will  pore  o'er  paintings  by  thy  plastic  hand. 
And  vaunt  thy  skill,  and  tell  thy  deeds  of  grace. 
Oh  may  they  then,  who  crown  thee  with  true  bays. 
Saying,  '  What  love  unto  her  son  she  bore  !  ' 
Make  this  addition  to  thy  perfect  praise, 
*  Nor  ever  yet  was  mother  worshipped  more  ! ' 
So  shall  I  live  with  thee,  and  thy  dear  fame 
Shall  link  my  love  unto  thine  honoured  name. 


English  Sonnets 


227 


CCCCXLIX 
AD    MA  TREM. 

MARCH    13,    1863. 

/^H  what  a  royalty  of  song  should  greet 

^^     The  unclouded  advent  of  thy  natal  day  ! 

All  things  of  musical  utterance  should  meet 

In  concord  of  a  many-sounding  lay  ; — 

Let  the  proud  trumpet  tongue  thy  noble  praise, 

The  rolling  drum  reverberate  thy  fame, 

Let  fifes  and  flutes  their  fluttering  voices  raise, 

And  the  glad  cymbals  tinkle  to  thy  name  ; 

Let  the  clear  horn  play  tribute  to  thy  truth. 

The  deep-based  viol  tenderly  intone 

Thy  womanly  pity  and  large  heart  of  ruth  ; 

But  of  my  love  let  my  voice  sing  alone  : 

Theme  to  my  jealous  lips  most  dear,  most  meet, 

If  that  my  voice  to  voice  it  were  more  sweet. 


Julian  Fane 
1827 — 1870 


CCCCL 
AD    MA  TREM. 

MARCH    13,    1864. 

IV /TUSIC,  and  frankincense  of  flowers,  belong 

To  this  sweet  festival  of  all  the  year. 
Take,  then,  the  latest  blossom  of  my  song, 
And  to  Love's  canticle  incline  thine  ear. 
What  is  it  that  Love  chaunts  ?  thy  perfect  praise. 
What  is  it  that  Love  prays  ?  worthy  to  prove. 
What  is  it  Love  desires  ?  thy  length  of  days. 
What  is  it  that  Love  asks  ?  return  of  love. 
Ah,  what  requital  can  Love  ask  more  dear 
Than  by  Love's  priceless  self  to  be  repaid  ? 
Thy  liberal  love,  increasing  year  by  year. 
Hath  granted  more  than  all  my  heart  hath  prayed. 
And,  prodigal  as  Nature,  makes  me  pine 
To  think  how  poor  my  love  compared  with  thine  ! 


228  A  Treasury  of 

CCCCLI 

AD    MA  TREM 

MARCH    13,    1870. 

I 

Julian  Fake     "IT  THEN  the  vast  heaven  is  dark  with  ominous 
1827-1870        V  V      clouds, 

That  lower  their  gloomful  faces  to  the  earth  ; 
When  all  things  sweet  and  fair  are  cloaked  in  shrouds, 
And  dire  calamity  and  care  have  birth  ; 
When  furious  tempests  strip  the  woodland  green, 
And  from  bare  boughs  the  hapless  songsters  sing ; 
When  Winter  stalks,  a  spectre,  on  the  scene. 
And  breathes  a  blight  on  every  living  thing  ; 
Then,  when  the  spirit  of  man,  by  sickness  tried. 
Half  fears,  half  hopes,  that  Death  be  at  his  side, 
Outleaps  the  sun,  and  gives  him  life  again. 
O  Mother,  I  clasped  Death  ;  but,  seeing  thy  face. 
Leapt  from  his  dark  arms  to  thy  dear  embrace. 

CCCCLII 

2 

0  O,  like  a  wanderer  from  the  world  of  shades. 

Back  to  the  firm  earth  and  familiar  skies, 
Back  to  that  light  of  love  that  never  fades — 
The  unbroken  sunshine  of  thy  blissful  eyes, 

1  come — to  greet  thee  on  this  happy  day 
That  lets  a  fresh  pearl  on  thy  life  appear  ; 
That  decks  thy  jewelled  age  with  fresh  array 
Of  good  deeds  done  within  the  circled  year  ; 
So  art  thou  robed  in  majesty  of  grace, 

In  regal  purple  of  pure  womanhood  ; 
Throned  in  thy  high  pre-eminence  of  place  ; 
Sceptred  and  crowned,  a  very  Queen  of  Good. 
Receive  my  blessing,  perfect  as  thou  art, 
Queen  of  all  good,  and  sovereign  of  my  heart. 


English  Sonnets  229 

CCCCLIII 

BEAUTY  still  walketh  on  the  earth  and  air  :  Alexander 

Smith 

Our  present  sunsets  are  as  rich  in  gold  — 

.  .  °  1830— 1867 

As  ere  the  Iliad's  music  was  out-rolled, 

The  roses  of  the  Spring  are  ever  fair, 

'Mong  branches  green  still  ring-doves  coo  and  pair, 

And  the  deep  sea  still  foams  its  music  old  ; 

So,  if  we  are  at  all  divinely  souled, 

This  beauty  will  unloose  our  bonds  of  care. 

'Tis  pleasant,  when  blue  skies  are  o'er  us  bending 

Within  old  starry-gated  Poesy, 

To  meet  a  soul  set  to  no  worldly  tune. 

Like  thine,  sweet  Friend  !     Oh,  dearer  this  to  me 

Than  are  the  dewy  trees,  the  sun,  the  moon, 

Or  noble  music  with  a  golden  ending. 


CCCCLIV 

T   AST  night  my  cheek  was  wetted  with  warm  tears, 
■^     Each  worth  a  world.  They  fell  from  eyes  divine. 
Last  night  a  loving  lip  was  pressed  to  mine 
And  at  its  touch  fled  all  the  barren  years  ; 
And  softly  couched  upon  a  bosom  white. 
Which  came  and  went  beneath  me  like  a  sea. 
An  emperor  I  lay  in  empire  bright. 
Lord  of  the  beating  heart,  while  tenderly 
Love-words  were  glutting  my  love-greedy  ears. 
Kind  Love,  I  thank  thee  for  that  happy  night ! 
Richer  this  cheek  with  those  warm  tears  of  thine 
Than  the  vast  midnight  with  its  gleaming  spheres, 
Leander  toiling  through  the  moonlight  brine, 
Kingdomless  Anthony,  were  scarce  my  peers. 


Alexander 
Smith 

1830 — 1867 


230  A  Treasury  of 

! 

CCCCLV  j 

QHEATHED  is  the  river  as  it  glideth  by,  i 

"^     Frost-pearled  are  all  the  boughs  in  forests  old,  \ 

The  sheep  are  huddling  close  upon  the  wold,  ] 

And  over  them  the  stars  tremble  on  high.  j 

Pure  joys  these  winter  nights  around  me  lie  ; —  ' 

'Tis  fine  to  loiter  through  the  lighted  street  ] 

At  Christmas  time,  and  guess  from  brow  and  pace  \ 

The  doom  and  history  of  each  one  we  meet, 

What  kind  of  heart  beats  in  each  dusky  case  • 

Whiles  startled  by  the  beauty  of  a  face 

In  a  shop-light  a  moment.     Or  instead, 

To  dream  of  silent  fields  where  calm  and  deep 

The  sunshine  lieth  like  a  golden  sleep — 

Recalling  sweetest  looks  of  Summers  dead. 


CCCCLVI 
MISS  NIGHTINGALE. 

T  TOW  must  the  soldier's  tearful  heart  expand, 

•^  -*•      Who  from  a  long  and  obscure  dream  of  pain, — 

His  foeman's  frown  imprinted  in  his  brain, — 

Wakes  to  thy  healing  face  and  dewy  hand  ! 

When  this  great  noise  hath  rolled  from  off  the  land. 

When  all  those  fallen  Englishmen  of  ours 

Have  bloomed  and  faded  in  Crimean  flowers, 

Thy  perfect  charity  unsoiled  shall  stand. 

Some  pitying  student  of  a  nobler  age. 

Lingering  o'er  this  year's  half-forgotten  page, 

Shall  see  its  beauty  smiling  ever  there  ; 

Surprised  to  tears  his  beating  heart  he  stills, 

Like  one  who  finds  among  Athenian  hills 

A  Temple  like  a  lily  white  and  fair. 


English  Sonnets  231 

CCCCLVII 

OWEET  Mavis  !  at  this  cool  delicious  hour  david  Gray 

Of  gloaming,  when  a  pensive  quietness  iSasHTsei 

Hushes  the  odorous  air, — with  what  a  power 
Of  impulse  unsubdued  dost  thou  express 
Thyself  a  spirit  !     While  the  silver  dew 
Holy  as  manna  on  the  meadow  falls. 
Thy  song's  impassioned  clarity,  trembling  through 
This  omnipresent  stillness,  disenthrals 
The  soul  to  adoration.     First  I  heard 
A  low  thick  lubric  gurgle,  soft  as  love. 
Yet  sad  as  memory,  through  the  silence  poured 
Like  starlight.     But  the  mood  intenser  grows, 
Precipitate  rapture  quickens,  move  on  move 
Lucidly  linked  together,  till  the  close. 


CCCCLVIII  ; 

j\  DEEP  unlovely  brooklet,  moaning  slow  ! 

Through  moorish  fen  in  utter  loneliness  ! 
The  partridge  cowers  beside  thy  loamy  flow  j 

In  pulseful  tremor,  when  with  sudden  press  ' 

The  huntsman  fluskers  through  the  rustled  heather. 
In  March  thy  sallow-buds  from  vermeil  shells  \ 

Break,  satin-tinted,  downy  as  the  feather  ! 

Of  moss-chat,  that  among  the  purplish  bells  | 

Breasts  into  fresh  new  life  her  three  unborn. 
The  plover  hovers  o'er  thee,  uttering  clear 

And  mournful,  strange,  his  human  cry  forlorn  ;  ; 

While  wearily,  alone,  and  void  of  cheer,  j 

Thou  guid'st  thy  nameless  waters  from  the  fen, 
To  sleep  unsunned  in  an  untrampled  glen. 


232  A  Treasury  of 


CCCCLIX 
IN   THE    SHADOWS. 


David  Gray      TF  it  must  be  ;  if  it  must  be,  O  God  ! 

1838^861        •*-     That  I  die  young,  and  make  no  further  moans  ; 
That  underneath  the  unrespective  sod. 
In  unescutcheoned  privacy,  my  bones 
Shall  crumble  soon, — then  give  me  strength  to  bear 
The  last  convulsive  throe  of  too  sweet  breath  ! 
I  tremble  from  the  edge  of  life,  to  dare 
The  dark  and  fatal  leap,  having  no  faith. 
No  glorious  yearning  for  the  Apocalypse. 
But  like  a  child  that  in  the  night-time  cries 
For  light,  I  cry  ;  forgetting  the  eclipse 
Of  knowledge  and  our  human  destinies. 
O  peevish  and  uncertain  soul  !  obey 
The  law  of  life  in  patience  till  the  Day. 


CCCCLX 

TVTOW,  while  the  long-delaying  ash  assumes 
-•-  ^     The  delicate  April  green,  and,  loud  and  clear. 
Through  the  cool,  yellow,  mellow  twilight  glooms, 
The  thrush's  song  enchants  the  captive  ear  ; 
Now,  while  a  shower  is  pleasant  in  the  falling. 
Stirring  the  still  perfume  that  wakes  around  ; 
Now  that  doves  mourn,  and  from  the  distance  cal- 
ling, 
The  cuckoo  answers  Avith  a  sovereign  sound, — 
Come,  with  thy  native  heart,  O  true  and  tried  ! 
But  leave  all  books  ;  for  what  with  converse  high. 
Flavoured  with  Attic  wit,  the  time  shall  glide 
On  smoothly,  as  a  river  floweth  by. 
Or  as  on  stately  pinion,  through  the  gray 
Evening,  the  culver  cuts  his  liquid  way. 


English  Sonnets  233 

CCCCLXI 
IN  THE  SHADOWS. 
3 
/^CTOBER'S  gold  is  dim— the  forests  rot,  DAvmGRAv 

^^     The  weary  rain  falls  ceaseless,  while  the  day         1838—1861 
Is  wrapped  in  damp.     In  mire  of  village  way 
The  hedge-row  leaves  are  stamped  ;  and,  all  forgot, 
The  broodless  nest  sits  visible  in  the  thorn. 
Autumn,  among  her  drooping  marigolds, 
Weeps  all  her  garnered  sheaves,  and  empty  folds. 
And  dripping  orchards — plundered  and  forlorn. 
The  season  is  a  dead  one,  and  I  die  ! 
No  more,  no  more  for  me  the  Spring  shall  make 
A  resurrection  in  the  earth,  and  take 
The  death  from  out  her  heart — O  God,  I  die  ! 
The  cold  throat-mist  creeps  nearer,  till  I  breathe 
Corruption.     Drop,  stark  night,  upon  my  death  ! 


CCCCLXII 

4 

T^IE  down,  O  dismal  day  !  and  let  me  live  ; 

And  come,  blue  deeps  !  magnificently  strown 
With  coloured  clouds — large,  light,  and  fugitive — 
By  upper  winds  through  pompous  motions  blown. 
Now  it  is  death  in  life — a  vapour  dense 
Creeps  round  my  window  till  I  cannot  see 
The  far  snow- shining  mountains,  and  the  glens 
Shagging  the  mountain-tops.     O  God  !  make  free 
This  barren,  shackled  earth,  so  deadly  cold — 
Breathe  gently  forth  Thy  Spring,  till  Winter  flies 
In  rude  amazement,  fearful  and  yet  bold. 
While  she  performs  her  'customed  charities. 
I  weigh  the  loaded  hours  till  life  is  bare — 
O  God  !  for  one  clear  day,  a  snowdrop,  and  sweet  air  ! 


1855—1874 


234  A  Treasury  of  English  Sonnets. 

CCCCLXIII 

„»  ^"Yf''        1\.T0  more  these  passion-worn  faces  shall  men's  eyes 

Madox  Brown       I  ^  .  . 

—  Behold  in  life.     Death  leaves  no  trace  behind 

Of  their  wild  hate  and  wilder  love,  grown  blind 
In  desperate  longing,  more  than  the  foam  which  lies 
Splashed  up  awhile  where  the  showered  spray  descries 
The  waves  whereto  their  cold  limbs  were  resigned  ; 
Yet  ever  doth  the  sea-wind's  undefined 
Vague  wailing  shudder  with  their  dying  sighs. 
For  all  men's  souls  'twixt  sorrow  and  love  are  cast, 
As  on  the  earth  each  lingers  his  brief  space. 
While  surely  nightfall  comes,  where  each  man's  face 
In  death's  obliteration  sinks  at  last 
As  a  deserted  wind-tossed  sea's  foam-trace — 
Life's  chilled  boughs  emptied  by  death's  autumn-blast. 


NOTES 


NOTES 


Sir  (Tkmits  Mmt  airb  tlje  @arl  of  Sitrreg. 

'  In  the  latter  end  of  the  same  kings  raigne '  (Heniy  VIII's),  writes 
Puttenham,  '  sprong  up  a  new  company  of  courtly  makers,  of  whom 
Sir  T/iomas  Wyat  th'  elder  &  Henry  Earle  of  Surrey  were  the  two  chief- 
taines,  who  having  travailed  into  Italic,  and  there  tasted  the  sweete  and 
stately  measures  and  stile  of  the  Italian  Poesie  as  novices  newly  crept 
out  of  the  schooles  of  Dante,  Aiioste,  and  Petrarch,  they  greatly  pollished 
our  rude  &  homely  maner  of  vulgar  Poesie,  from  that  it  had  bene 
before,  and  for  that  cause  may  justly  be  sayd  the  first  reformers  of  our 
English  meetre  and  stile.' '  The  poems  of  Wyat  and  Surrey,  fellow- 
singers  whose  'sweet  breath,'  more  immediately  than  Dan  Chaucer's, 

'  Preluded  those  melodious  bursts,  that  fill 
The  spacious  times  of  great  Elizabeth,' 

though  extensively  circulated  in  manuscript,  and  possibly  on  loose 
printed  sheets  also,  during  the  lives  of  their  authors,  were  not  published 
in  the  ordinary  sense  of  the  word  until  1557,  when  they  appeared,  with 
others,  in  TotteVs  Miscellany}  The  two  poets  have  often  been  elabo- 
rately compared,  but  by  none  better  than  Mr.  Stopford  Brooke,  thus 
succinctly  :  '  The  subjects  of  Wyatt  and  Surrey  were  chiefly  lyrical,  and 
the  fact  that  they  imitated  the  same  model  has  made  some  likeness 
between  them.  Like  their  personal  characters,  however,  the  poetry  of 
Wyatt  is  the  more  thoughtful  and  the  more  strongly  felt,  but  Surrey's  has 
a  sweeter  movement  and  a  livelier  fancy.  Both  did  this  great  thing  for 
English  verse — they  chose  an  exquisite  model,  and  in  imitating  it  "  cor- 
rected the  ruggedness  of  English  poetry."  '  ^  One  consequence  of  this 
difference  in  character  and  temperament  was  that  Wyat  easily  excelled 
Surrey  in  song-writing,  of  which  he  possessed  the  true  gift ;  and  it  has 


1    The  Arte  of  English  Poesie,  1589,  Lib.  i,  chap,  xxxi,  p.  48. 

^  Song-es  and  Soncttcs,  written  by  the  ryght  honorable  Lor de  Henry  Haward 
late  Earle  of  Surrey,  and  other.     1557. 

3  English  Literature  Primer,  1876,  p.  58. 

237 


238  Notes 

§ir  (lIjoiuhs  S^^gat  nub  tbc  Carl  of  ^urrrg. 

been  justly  remarked  by  Mr.  Palgrave,  whose  Golden  Treasury  conta.ms 
two  of  Wyat's  songs,  while  Surrey  is  unrepresented,  that  it  was  long 
before  English  poetry  returned  to  his  '  charming  simplicity.'  In  reading 
the  poetry  of  this  time  it  is  necessary  to  remember  that  the  language 
being  in  an  imperfectly  developed  condition,  pronunciation  was  some- 
what unsettled  and  arbitrary.  But  if  the  more  ordinary  variances  from 
modern  practice  be  kept  in  view — the  tendency  of  the  accent  to  fall 
towards  the  end  rather  than  the  beginning  of  words,  especially  those  of 
recent  acquisition  ;  and  the  frequent  necessity  of  giving  such  words  as 
passion,  impatient,  &.C.,  the  value  of  three  and  four  syllables  respec- 
tively— Wyat  and  Surrey's  metre  will  be  found  comparatively  legular. 

PACE 

I — I.  From  Tottel's  Miscellany,  ed.  Arber,  1870.  perfect:  'parfit' 
(1557)  ;  persevere-  persevere,  continue — then  so  accentuated,  as  in 
Spenser's  Amo7-etti  9, 1.  g  {infra,  p.  243)  ;  'scaped :  '  scape '  (1557) ; 
lever,  or  lieffer  =  dearer  ;  property  =  qualities  or  powers  ;  longer  : 
'  lenger '  (1557). 

2 — II.   From  the  Devonshire  MS.  apud  Dr.  G.  F.  Nott's  edition  of 

Wyat,  1816.     lyiin  =  cease,  desist — in  use  as  late  as  Milton  ;  been  : 

qu.  'bin'?    LI.  13-14.    How  like  Bums's  sarcasm  (^/i/j  _/az>  aW 

fause)  : 

'  Nae  ferlie  'tis,  though  fickle  she  prove — 
A  woman  has't  by  kind  '  ! 

Wyat  repeats  the  sentiment  in  one  of  his  songs  (p.  139,  Aldine  ed. 

1831): 

'  And  though  she  change  it  is  no  shame. 
Their  kind  it  is,  and  hath  been  long.' 

III.  soote  =  sweet.     So  Barnabe  Barnes  {Parthenophil  and  Par. 
thenophe,  1593,  ed.  Grosart,  1S75,  Son.  40,  1.  12)  '  songes  soote'  : 

'  Thou  with  thy  notes  harmonius,  and  songes  soote 
Allur'd  my  sunne,  to  fier  mine  harts  soft  roote.' 

make  —  mate  ;  flete,  or  flote  —  float,  swim  ;  slings  —  casts  off  ; 
smale  =  s'mall — pronounced  as  spelt  ;  viings  —  mingles,  mixes. 
This  sonnet  may  be  compared  with  Petrarca's  269th,  '  Zefiro 
torna,'  of  which  it  is  partly  imitative  ;  and  something  very  like  a 
recollection  of  it  is  perceptible  in  the  opening  lines  of  Pope's 
TetJiple  of  Fame. 
3— IV.  Mr.  Tomlinson  i^The  Sonnet:  its  Origin,  Structure,  and 
Place  in  Poetry,  1874,  p.  81)  draws  attention  to  the  circumstance 
that  this  sonnet  is  not  original  to  Surrey,  but  really  a  pretty  close 
rendering  of  Petrarca's.  113th,  'Pommi  ove  '1  Sol  occide  i  fiori  e 


Notes  239 

PAGE 

r  erba'  (cf.  Horace,  Lib.  i,  Ode  22).  It  may  be  said  that  it  is  the 
exception  when  Surrey's  sonnets  are  not  translations  or  adaptations 
from  Petrarca  ;  while  almost  as  small  a  proportion  of  Wyat's  is 
original.  Among  the  poems  of  '  Uncertaine  Auctours  '  printed  in 
Tottel's  Miscellany  there  occurs  an  interesting  early  tribute  in 
sonnet-form  to  the  great  master,  which  may  not  be  out  of  place 
here  (edn.  1585,  fol.  74)  : — 

A  PRAISE  OF  PETRARCHE  AND  LAURA  HIS  LAD  YE. 

O  |l£irarcljc,  Ijrab  anb  piiiue  of  ^ofts  all, 

2t!lhosc  libchj  q'lft  of  flotn'mg  fIot]urnce 

5,i!lcll  maji  ioc  srchc  but  finbc  not  bofaj  or  inljcncf, 

^0  iiiK  a  C(ift  Initlj  tijce  bib  list  anb  fall, 

^rate  to  Ibn  bouts  aub  glorj)  rmmorlall 

|3c  to  tbn  uamt,  nub  to  brr  rvtcllcucc 

Mlbose  bcautie  ligbtucb  iu  tbn  timr  aub  scucc, 

§0  to  be  set  foitb  as  uouc  olljcr  sljall. 

SSll^iT  batlj  not  our  pcitts  rimrs  so  prrfct  forougbtc, 

l^c  IdIjit  our  time  fortlj  briucictb  bcautie  suclj  : 

(To  trn  our  foits  as  golbc  is  bn  tbc  toucb, 

|f  to  the  stile  tbe  matter  aibeb  ouqbt : 

^ul  tberc  teas  nebcr  ITaura  more  tbeu  one, 

^nb  \ti  Ijab  petrarcli  for  Ijis  |^aragou£. 

Petrarca's  sonnet  has  been  frequently  translated  later  ;  e.g. ,  anony- 
mously in  T/ie  Phcenix  Nest,  1593  (Park's  Heliconia,  181 5,  vol.  ii., 

p.  116): 

'  Set  me  where  Phoebus  heate  the  flowers  slaieth  ; ' 

by  Drummond  of  Hawthornden  {Poems,  1616,  sig.  g)  : 
'  Place  me  where  angry  Titan  burnes  the  More  ; ' 

Philip  Ayres  (Lyric  Poems,  Szc,  1687,  p.  78)  : 

'  Place  mee  where  Sol  dryes  up  the  Flow'ry  Fields  ; ' 

Charlotte  Smith  {Elegiac  Sonnets,  Szc,  1795,  p.  13) ;  Charles  John- 
ston (Sonnets,  &c.,  1823,  p.  85)  ;  and  lastly  Mr.  Tomlinson  him- 
self, though  without  acknowledgment  to  an  anonymous  version 
(Sonnets  and  Odes  Translated  from  the  Ltalian  of  Petrarch.  Lond. 
1777.  P-  21)  from  which  he  varies  in  no  appreciable  degree.  Put- 
tenham,  inadvertently  no  doubt,  ascribes  Surrey's  sonnet  to  Sir 
Thomas  Wyat  (Arte  of  Eng.  Poesie,  p.  186). 
3 — V.  Sir  T.  IF.  the  Elder  =  Sir  Thomas  Wyat,  who  paraphrased 
the  Seven  Penitential  Psalms  ;  ark  =  coffer,  or  casket  ;  gests  = 
heroic  deeds  ;  ferfect :  'perfite' (1557) ;  imprijited :    '  y-printed' 


240  Notes 

Sir  O^Iiomas  ©nat  anb  \\)t  €arl  of  Sitrreg. 

PAGE 

(Haiington  MS.).  Had  we  the  precise  dates  at  which  Surrey's 
various  poems  were  written,  it  could  with  more  certitude  be  deter- 
mined whether  such  words  as  those  in  the  closing  verses  of  this 
sonnet  bore  allusion  to  the  king.  As  it  is,  there  can  be  little 
doubt  that  they  did  ;  and  that  being  so,  it  hardly  required  the  thun- 
derbolt fiiat  followed  in  another  (vii)  to  seal  the  doom  of  that  vir- 
tuous nobleman.  The  pretext  on  which  Surrey  was  condemned 
and  executed  was  his  assumption  of  a  portion  of  the  royal  arms. 

4 — VI.  hight  =  wert  named  ;  thy  cousin  =  Anne  Boleyn  ;  chase  = 
didst  choose;  r^«fli?r=  surrender;  timely  =  early.  Clere,  Surrey's 
faithful  friend  and  follower,  while  succouring  his  master  in  ex- 
tremity during  an  attempt  of  the  English  to  storm  Montreuil, 
received  a  wound  which  eventually  caused  his  death.  It  does  not 
appear  that  the  lady,  a  daughter  of  Sir  John  Shelton  of  Shelton  in 
Norfolk,  whom  'for  love'  he  'chase,'  ever  became  his  bride. 
'  This  sonnet,'  says  Leigh  Hunt  {Book  0/ t/ie  Sonnet,  1867,  i.  140), 
'  is^  complete  of  its  kind.  There  is  not  a  sentence  which  does  not 
contain  information  ;  not  a  word  too  much  ;  no  want  of  increased 
interest ;  all  is  strong,  simple,  and  affecting.' 
VII.     See  reference  under  V. 

2-4 — iii-vil.  Of  these  examples  from  Surrey  one  only  does  not  occur 
in  TotteVs  Miscellany:  viz.  vi,  which  is  here  given,  slightly  amended, 
from  Camden's  Remains  Concernijtg  Britain,  ed.  1674,  p.  514. 

(C-bmuiib  Sptnscr. 
Spenser's  own  love-story  forms  the  subject  of  the  Amoretti  (1595). 
Amid  so  much  fruitless  sonnet-wooing  as  was  then  in  vogue,  one  wel- 
comes the  advent  of  a  poet  who  to  many  higher  merits  adds  the  very 
rare  one  of  having  prosecuted  a  successful  suit  ;  though  it  is  not  in 
the  Amoretti,  but  in  the  glorious  nuptial  ode  published  with  them,  the 
Epithalatniott,  that  Spenser  celebrates  his  triumph  most  divinely.  Not- 
withstanding the  exceptional  feature  referred  to,  however,  and  the  oft- 
recurring  signature  of  his  genius  throughout,  unprejudiced  readers  must 
acknowledge  that  these  sonnets  are  disappointing.  They  fall  short  of 
what  we  should  have  expected  of  the  author  of  The  Faerie  Qiieene. 
Regarding  their  peculiar  form,  Leigh  Hunt  has  pointed  out  that  Spenser, 
with  all  his  Italianate  proclivities,  was  the  first  who  deliberately  aban- 
doned the  archetypal  pattern  of  the  sonnet.  It  is  interesting  to  note 
his  several  experiments.  The  earliest  was  in  blank  verse,  of  which  the 
following  is  a  favourable  example.  It  forms  one  of  a  series  of  trans- 
lations from  Du  Bellay,  contributed  by  Spenser  to  Vander  Noodt's 


Notes  241 

Theatre  for  Worldlings,  a  little  work  which  appeared  in  1569,  while 
the  poet  was  yet  in  his  seventeenth  year,  and  just  entered  of  Pembroke- 
'  Hall,'  Cambridge  :— 

I  saw  a  fresh  spring  rise  out  of  a  rocke, 

Clere  as  Christall  against  the  Sunny  beames, 

The  bottome  yellow  like  the  shining  land 

That  golden  Pactol  drives  upon  the  plaine. 

It  seemed  that  arte  and  nature  strived  to  joyne 

There  in  one  place  all  pleasures  of  the  eye. 

There  was  to  heare  a  noise  alluring  slepe 

Of  many  accordes  more  swete  than  Mermaids  song, 

The  seates  and  benches  shone  as  Ivorie, 

An  hundred  Nymphes  sate  side  by  side  about, 

When  from  nie  hilles  a  naked  rout  of  Faunes 

With  hideous  cry  assembled  on  the  place, 

Which  with  their  feete  uncleane  the  water  fouled. 

Threw  down  the  seats,  and  drove  the  Nimphs  to  flight. 

His  next  was  in  the  common  illegitimate  form  of  three  elegiac  quatrains 
and  a  rimed  couplet,  and  will  be  illustrated  best  in  the  same  poem,  as 
it  appeared,  with  others  similarly  transformed,  in  the  1591  volume  of 
Complaints,  Sec,  under  the  title  of  '  The  Visions  of  Bellay.' 

I  saw  a  spring  out  of  a  rocke  forth  rayle. 

As  cleare  as  Christall  gainst  the  Sunnie  beames, 

The  bottome  yeallow,  like  the  golden  grayle 

That  bright  Pactolus  washeth  with  his  streames  ; 

It  seem'd  that  Art  and  Nature  had  assembled 

All  pleasure  there,  for  which  mans  hart  could  long  ; 

And  there  a  noyse  alluring  sleepe  soft  trembled, 

Of  manie  accords  more  sweete  than  Memiaids  song : 

The  seates  and  benches  shone  as  yvorie. 

And  hundred  Nymphes  sate  side  by  side  about  ; 

When  from  nigh  hills  with  hideous  outcrie, 

A  troupe  of  Satyres  in  the  place  did  rout. 

Which  with  their  villeine  feete  the  streame  did  ray, 

Threw  down  the  seats,  and  drove  the  Nymphs  away. 

In  his  third  and  final  experiment  the  three  quatrains  are  interlaced  by 
means  of  a  rime  common  to  each — a  method  which  seems  to  have  satis- 
fied his  maturer  judgment,  since  it  is  that  on  which  the  Amoretti  are 
constructed  ;  as  here  : — 

(26) 

Sweet  is  the  Rose,  but  growes  upon  a  brere  ; 
Sweet  is  the  Junipere,  but  sharpe  his  bough  ; 
Sweet  is  the  Eglantine,  but  pricketh  nere  ; 
Sweet  is  the  firbloome,  but  his  braunches  rough  : 
Sweet  is  the  Cypresse,  but  his  rynd  is  tough, 
Sweet  is  the  nut,  but  bitter  is  his  pill  ; 
Sweet  is  the  broome-flowre,  but  yet  sowre  enough  ; 
And  sweet  is  Moly,  but  his  root  is  ill. 


*» 


242  Notes 

€bmiinb  ^ptuscr. 

So  every  sweet  with  soure  is  tempred  still, 
That  maketh  it  be  coveted  the  more  : 
For  easie  things  that  may  be  got  at  will 
Most  sorts  of  men  doe  set  but  little  store. 
Why  then  should  I  accoumpt  of  little  paine, 
That  endlesse  pleasure  shall  unto  me  gaine  ? ' 

Of  this  last  form  Leigh  Hunt  justly  remarks  that  '  It  is  surely  not  so 
happy  as  that  of  the  Italian  sonnet.  The  rhyme  seems  at  once  less 
responsive  and  always  interfering  ;  and  the  music  has  no  longer  its 
major  and  minor  divisions.'     (Book  of  the  Sonnet,  i,  74.) 

PAGE 

5 — VIII,  8.     Cf.  Tho.  Heywood  (^   Woman  Kilde  with  Kindnesse, 
ed.  Lond.  1874,  p.  XI2)  whose  Wendoll  cries  : 

'  O  speake  no  more, 
For  more  then  this  I  know,  &  have  recorded 
Within  the  red-leav'd  Table  of  my  heart.' 

IX.  portly  .  .  .  portliness  :  'There  lies  in  "portly"  a  certain 

sense  of  digjiity  of  demeanour  still,  but  always  connoted  with  this 

a  cumbrousness  and  weight,  such  as  Spenser  .   .   .  would  never 

have  ascribed  to  his  bride.' — Trench's  Select  Glossmy,  s.  v.    sdeign 

=  disdain,  scorn.     13-14  Cf.  A.  H.  Clough's  poem  The  Higher 

Courage  : 

'  He  who  would  climb  and  soar  aloft 
Must  needs  keep  ever  at  his  side 
The  tonic  of  a  wholesome  pride.' 

In  a  MS.  note  under  this  sonnet  in  his  copy  of  Spenser,  Leigh 
Hunt  says  :  '  The  sonnet,  saving  the  repeated  i's  in  the  rhymes, 
is  good  ;  but  I  must  beg  leave  not  to  like  the  woman.'  See  also 
Book  of  the  Sonnet,  i,  151. 
6 — X.  Lord  Brooke  begins  one  of  his  pieces  {Ccelica,  '  Sonnet '  3, 
Works,  1633,  P-  162)  : 

'  More  than  most  faire,  full  of  that  heavenly  fire, 
Kindled  above  to  shew  the  Makers  glory  ; ' 

a  coincidence  which,  together  with  the  circumstance  noted  by  Dr. 
Hannah  {Courtly  Poets,  1870,  p.  244)  that  this  sonnet  of  Spenser's 
is  ascribed  to  Sir  Edward  Dyer  in  the  Kawlinson  MS.  in  the  Bod- 
leian Library,  points  to  the  literary  fellowship  of  these  writers. 
Spenser  thus  pursues  his  theme  in  the  next,  or  9th,  of  the  Anioretti, 
which,  with  the  15th  ('  Ye  tradefuU  Merchants,'  &c.)  and  64th 
('Comming  to  kisse  her  lyps,'  &c.),  may  recall  Shakspeare  and 
others  (lv,  lxxxix,  and  under) : — 

>  ////  :=  peel. 


Notes 


243 


Long-while  I  sought  to  what  I  might  compare 
Those  powrefuU  eies,  which  lighten  my  dark  spright, 
Yet  find  I  nought  on  earth  to  which  I  dare 
Resemble  th'  ymage  of  their  goodly  light. 
Not  to  the  Sun  :  for  they  doo  shine  by  night  ; 
Nor  to  the  Moone  :  for  they  are  changed  never  ; 
Nor  to  the  Starres  :  for  they  have  purer  sight  ; 
Nor  to  the  fire  :  for  they  consume  not  ever  ; 
Nor  to  the  lightning  :  for  they  still  persever  ; 
Nor  to  the  Diamond  :  for  they  are  more  tender  ; 
Nor  unto  Christall :  for  nought  may  them  sever  ; 
Nor  unto  glasse  :  such  basenesse  mought  offend  her  ; 
Then  to  the  Maker  selfe  they  likest  be, 
Whose  light  doth  lighten  all  that  here  we  see. 

XI.  Can  Spenser  have  been  thinking  of  Bamabe  Barnes  in  this 
sonnet  ?    I  fancy  I  detect  in  it  a  double  allusion  to  the  Parthenophil 
and  Parthcnophe  published  two  years  before  .-  with  11.  4-7  cf.  the 
Madrigal  under  LV  and  with  1.  g  the  Sonnet  *  If  Cupid  keepe,'  &c., 
under  CVIII. 
7 — XIII.  Helice^^ '  'EXlktj,  or  the  Circumvolver, — the  Greek  name  for 
the  constellation  Ursa  Major.    Hence  perhaps  Shakspeare's  "  load- 
stars" of  eyes,  and  Milton's  idea  of  his  "  Cynosure."  ' — MS.  note 
by  Leigh  Hunt  in  his  copy  of  Spenser. 
8 — XIV.  Fondness  =  foolishness. 

XV,  6-12.   The  imagery  may  have  been  present  to  Wordsworth 
{Ecclesiastical  Sonnets,  Pt.  i,  7). 
9 — XVII,  5-6.     The  unconscious  action  of  love  has  been  expressed  in 
a  fine  metaphor  by  one  of  our  truest  living  poets  {Poems  by  Henry 
S.  Sutton,  1848,  p.  40) : 

'  Oh,  'tis  young  Love  ; — for  he  a  nest  can  raise 
In  hearts  that  never  guess  his  busy  wings.' 

10 — XIX.  '  Those  who  have  never  felt  the  need  of  the  divine,  entering 
by  the  channel  of  will  and  choice  and  prayer,  for  the  upholding, 
purifying,  and  glorifying  of  that  which  itself  first  created  human, 
will  consider  this  poem  untrue,  having  its  origin  in  religious  affec- 
tation. Others  will  think  otherwise.' — Dr.  George  MacDonald 
{England's  Antiphon,  p.  65). 
1 1 — XX.  '  I  insert  this  sonnet  on  account  of  the  picture  at  the  begin- 
ning, which  is  agreeably  in  the  taste  of  the  age.  The  sonnet  looks 
like  a  "  Valentine."  ' — Leigh  Yi\xn.t{Book  of  the  Sonnet,  i,  152). 
With  11.  1-4  cf.  Amoretti,  4,  9-12  : 

'  For  lusty  spring  now  in  his  timely  howre. 
Is  ready  to  come  forth  him  to  receive  : 
And  warnes  the  Earth  with  divers  colord  flowre 
To  decke  hir  selfe,  and  her  faire  mantle  weave ; ' 


244  "  Notes 

PAGE 

stanza  28  of  the  2nd  of  the  Two  (Santos  of  Mutabilitie ;  and 
Drummond,  cxxiii,  1-2,  on  which  see  note,  11  /«ai^  =:  mate. 
See  note  under  CXLI. 

12 — XXII.  The  reader  will  compare  this  with  similar  vaticinations  by 
Shakspeare  and  others  (lxvii,  &c.). 

xxiii.     ensue  =  follow  (intrans.) — more  frequently  transitive  in 
Spenser  :=  pursue,  as  in  his  dedicatory  sonnet  under  CXLV. 

13 — XXIV.  culver  z=  dove.  In  the  first  and  all  the  early  editions  this 
sonnet,  the  last  of  the  Amoi-etti,  is  numbered  '  LXXXIX'  instead  of 
Lxxxviii,  the  35th  ('  My  hungry  eyes  through  greedy  covetize  ') 
having  been  repeated  by  mistake  as  the  83rd.  It  may  be  noted 
that  Todd  (1805),  who  claims  and  has  heretofore  been  allowed  the 
credit  of  having  first  rectified  this  blunder,  was  anticipated  by 
Hughes  in  1715. 
5-13 — viii-xxiv.  From  Amoretti  and  Epitkalamion.  Written  not 
long  since  by  Edimatde  Spenser.  1595.  Prefixed  to  these  '  sweete 
conceited  Sonets,'  as  Ponsonby  the  publisher  calls  them  in  the  Epis- 
tle Dedicatory  \.o  Sir  Robert  Needham,  who  had  come  over  from  Ire- 
land in  the  same  ship  that  brought  the  MS.  from  Spen'ser,  are  two 
commendatory  sonnets  by  '  G.  W.  senior'  and  '  G.  W.  I.'  (conjec- 
turally  George  Whetstone  senior  and  junior)  which  Prof.  Child 
therefore  errs  in  stating  to  have  been  'first  printed' in  the  161 1  folio. 

13 — XXV.  Appended  to  Spenser's  Faerie  Qtieene,  1590  (Books  i-lll), 
and  entitled  in  full  A  Vision  upon  this  conceipt  of  the  Faery  (^ueene. 
'This  noble  sonnet,' says  Dr.  Hannah  ( 7",^^  Courtly  Poets,  from 
Raleigh  to  Montrose,  1870,  p.  215),  '  is  alone  sufficient  to  place 
Raleigh  in  the  rank  of  those  few  original  writers  who  can  introduce 
and  perpetuate  a  new  type  in  a  literature  ;  a  type  distinct  from 
the  "Visions"  which  Spenser  translated.  The  highest  tribute 
which  it  has  received  is  the  imitation  of  Milton : — 

"  Methought  I  saw  my  late  espoused  saint."  ' 
But  Mr.  Todd  quotes  a  sorvnet,  printed  as  early  as  1 594,  beginning: — 

"  Methought  I  saw  upon  Matilda's  tomb."^ 

Waldron  gives  another,  signed  "  E.  S.,"  which  was  printed  in 
1612  : — 


'  See  CLill,  p.  77. 

"  flte  Vision  0/  Matilda,  prefixed  to  Drayton's  Matilda,  1594,  and  signed  'H.G. 
tsquire. 


Notes  245 

"  Metnouglit  I  saw  in  dead  of  silent  night."  ' 
And  the  echo  is  still  repeated  by  poets  nearer  our  own  times  . — 
"  Methought  I  saw  the  footsteps  of  a  throne." 

Wordsworth  :  Miscellaneous  Sonneis. 

"  Methought  I  saw  a  face  divinely  fair, 
With  nought  of  earthly  passion." 

Lyra.  Apost.     No.  xcii. 

"  Methought  there  was  around  me  a  strange  light." 

Williams  :    Thoughts  in  Past  1  ears.     No.  Iv.  &c.' 

Raleigh  is  here  employing  a  style — truly  the  very  hyperbole  of  praise — 
which  the  reader  will  avoid  the  error  of  accepting  in  too  prosaic  a 
spirit.  It  were  in  Horatio's  language  to  '  consider  too  curiously '  to 
interpret  the  poem  as  a  piece  of  deliberate  critical  appraisement,  and 
thus  have  to  qualify  our  admiration  of  it  with  Dr.  Trench's  protest 
that  '  the  great  poets  of  the  past  lose  no  whit  of  their  glory  because  later 
poets  are  found  worthy  to  share  it  ; '  that  '  Petrarch  in  his  lesser,  and 
Homer  in  his  greater  sphere,  are  just  as  illustrious  since  Spenser  ap- 
peared as  before.'  {A  Household  Book  of  English  Poetiy,  ed.  1S70,  p. 
392).  Surrey,  earlier,  had  only  exercised  a  poet's  privilege,  presuma- 
bly without  slighting  the  '  Morning  Star,'  when  he  sang  of  his  deceased 
friend  Wyat  that  his  hand  had 

'  reft  Chaucer  the  glory  of  his  wit  ; ' 
and  Drummond  of  Hawthornden  furnishes  a  later  example  of  the  same 
figure  in  CXXXII.      Raleigh  has  another  noble  sonnet  which  must  find  a 
place  here.     It  is  prefixed  to  Sir  Arthur  Gorges'  translation  of  Lucans 
Fha7-salia:  containing  the  Civill  Warres  betweene  Cccsar  and Pcnipey,\t\^. 

TO  THE  TRANSLATORS 

Had  Lucan  hid  the  truth  to  please  the  time, 

He  had  beene  too  unworthy  of  thy  Penne, 

Who  never  sought,  nor  ever  car'd  to  clime 

By  flattery,  or  seeking  worthlesse  men. 

For  this  thou  hast  been  bruis'd  ;  but  yet  those  scarres 

Do  beautifie  no  lesse  than  those  wounds  do 

Receiv'd  in  just  and  in  religious  warres  ; 

Though  thou  hast  bled  by  both,  and  bearst  them  too, 

Change  not :  to  change  thy  fortune  tis  too  late  : 

Who  with  a  manly  faith  resolves  to  dye. 

May  promise  to  himself e  a  lasting  state, 

Though  not  so  great,  yet  free  from  infamy. 

Such  was  thy  Lucan,  whom  so  to  translate 

Nature  thy  Muse  (like  Lucans)  did  create, 

W.  R. 


"  A  Vision  npon  this  his  Minerva,  prefixed  to  Henry  Peacham's  Minen'a  Bri- 
tanna  [1612].     The  sonnet  has  a  distinctly  Spenserian  ring. 

2  'Sir  Arthur  Gorges  was  Raleigh's  kinsman  ;  had  been  captain  of  Raleigh's  own 
ship  in  the  Island  voyage,  when  he  was  wounded  by  his  side  in  the  landing  of  Fayal ; 


246  Notes 

Sir  ©taltcr  llalciglr. 

From  a  large  number  of  examples  read  in  the  wide  and,  as  was  fancied, 
promising  field  of  Elizabethan  and  Jacobean  encomiastic  verse,  where 
Raleif^h  shines  with  a  natural  and  characteristic  brilliance,  the  four  fol- 
lowing  may  be  subjoined  here  as  at  least  approximately  satisfying  the 
necessary  conditions  of  interest  and  poetic  merit  for  a  popular  collection. 
Curiously  enough,  three  of  them  lie  clustered  in  one  booklet :  namely, 
prefixed  to  John  Bodenham's  Belvedere  :  or.  The  Garden  of  the  Muses, 
1600.  The  first  of  the  triad  has  been  attributed  with  much  probability  to 
Anthony  Munday  (i553?-i633),  'poet-laureate  to  the  city  of  London,' 
and  the  third,  with  its  companion  To  the  Univcrsitie  of  Cambridge  (with- 
held), to  Bodenham  himself;  while  the  graceful  panegyrist  of  the  second, 
who  is  doubtless  identical  with  the  'A.  B.'  of  the  prefatory  sonnet  to 
England's  Helicon,  1600,  from  which  Bodenham  is  ascertained  to  have 
been  the  editor  of  that  more  famous  miscellany  also,  remains  unknown. 

TO  HIS  LOVING  AND  APPROOVED  GOOD  FRIEND, 

M.  JOHN    BODENHAM. 

To  thee  that  art  Arts  lover.  Learnings  friend, 
First  causer  and  collectour  of  these  floures  : 
Thy  paines  just  merit  I  in  right  commend. 
Costing  whole  years,  months,  weeks,  and  daily  hours. 
Like  to  the  Bee,  thou  every  where  didst  rome. 
Spending  thy  spirits  in  laborious  care  : 
And  nightly  brought'st  thy  gather'd  hony  home, 
As  a  true  worke-man  in  so  great  affaire. 
First,  of  thine  owne  deserving,  take  the  fame  ; 
Next,  of  thy  friends,  his  due  he  gives  to  thee  : 
That  love  of  learning  may  renowme  thy  name. 
And  leave  it  richly  to  posterity. 
Where  others  (who  might  better)  yet  forslow  it. 
May  see  their  sliame,  and  times  hereafter  know  it.* 

A.M. 

OF  THIS  GARDEN  OF  THE  MUSES. 

Thou  which  delight'st  to  view  this  goodly  plot. 
Here  take  such  flowres  as  best  shal  serve  thy  use, 

and  has  left  a  history  of  that  expedition  which  is  of  material  importance  in  Raleigh's 
biography.  He  is  the  "  Alcyon  "  of  "Colin  Clout's  come  home  again:"  Collier's 
"Spenser,"  vol.  v.,  p.  45  :  cf  "  Daphnaida,"  ib.,  229.' — Note.  p.  222  Courtly  Poets, 
as  before.  For  some  of  his  original  verses  see  Sir  E.  Brydges'  Restituta,  vol.  iv,, 
1816.  Excepting  JMr.  F"ry  (Bihlio.  Memoranda,  Bristol,  1816,  p.  27^).  the  biblio- 
graphers .seem  to  ignore  a  little  work  by  the  chevalier —  TJie  Wiscdome  of  the  Ancients, 
written  in  Latine  by  the  Ri^ht  Honourable  Sir  Francis  Bacon  Knight.  Baron  of 
yeru'.am,  and  Lor  H  Chancellor  of  England.  Done  into  English  by  Sir  Arthur  Gorges 
Knight,  l.ond.  sm.  8vo,  1619  :  a  copy  of  which,  the  reader  may  remember,  was  one 
of  Hugh  Miller's  early  possessions  {My  Schools  and  Schoolmasters,  1854,  chap.  xi.). 
^/>aines  =  pains-taking  .forslow  =  to  delay,  waste  in  sloth  : 

'  Forslow  no  time,  sweet  Lancaster  ;  let's  march.' 

itlaxlowe's  Edward  II.,  p.  199,  ed.  Dyce,  1862. 


Notes  247 

Where  thou  maist  find  in  every  curious  knot, 

Of  speciall  vertue,  and  most  precious  juyce, 

Set  by  Apollo  in  their  severall  places, 

And  nourished  with  his  celestiall  Beames,  "I 

And  watered  by  the  Muses  and  the  Graces, 

With  the  fresh  dew  of  those  Castalian  streames. 

What  sente  or  colour  canst  thou  but  devise  \ 

That  is  not  here,  that  may  delight  the  sense  ?  i 

Or  what  can  Art  or  Industry  comprize,  ' 

That  in  aboundance  is  not  gather'd  hence  ? 

No  Garden  yet  was  ever  halfe  so  sweet, 

As  where  Apollo  and  the  Muses  meet. 

A.  B. 

TO  THE  UNIVERSITIE  OF  OXENFORD. 
Thou  eye  of  Honour,  Nurserie  of  Fame, 
Still-teeming  Mother  of  immortall  seed  : 

Receive  these  blessed  Orphanes  of  thy  breed,  I 

As  from  thy  happie  issue  first  they  came. 
Those  flowing  wits  that  bathed  in  thy  foord, 

And  suck't  the  honie  dew  from  thy  pure  pap  :  j 

Returne  their  tribute  backe  into  thy  lap, 
In  rich-wrought  lines,  that  yeelde  no  idle  woord. 

O  let  thy  Sonnes  from  time  to  time  supplie  i 

This  Garden  of  the  Muses,  where  dooth  want  | 

Such  Flowers  as  are  not,  or  come  short,  or  scant  I 

Of  that  perfection  may  be  had  thereby  :  1 

So  shall  thy  name  live  still,  their  fame  ne're  dye,    ■  ■ 

Though  under  ground  whole  worlds  of  time  they  lie.  \ 

Stat  sine  inorte  deciis.  ' 

The  fourth  example  referred  to,  doubtless  the  work  of  Sir  John  Beau- 
mont  (being  subscribed  'I.    B.,'  and   prefixed  to  the    Sabnacis  and 

Jlermaph-oditus,  i6o2,  an  anonymous  work  now  confidently  ascribed  to  I 

his  famous  younger  brother,  Francis),  must  be  regarded  as  the  high-  | 

water-mark  of  a  style  which  was  then  deemed  the  most  elegant  vehicle  j 

of  adulation.    The  reader  will  most  readily  find  it  among  the  poems  in  1 

laudem  auctoris,  Dyce's  edition  of  Beaumont  and  Fletcher,  xi,  1846,  j 

443  ;  or  in  Dr.  Grosart's  Fuller  Worthies'  Library,  TJie  Poems  of  Sir  1 
yohn  Beaumont,  Bart.,  1869,  p.  205,  from  which  latter  it  is  here  given: — 

TO    THE  AUTHOUR. 
Eyther  the  goddesse  drawes  her  troupe  of  loves 
From  Paphos,  where  she  erst  was  held  divine, 
And  doth  unyoke  her  tender-necked  doves, 
Placing  her  seat  in  this  small  papry  shrine ; 
Or  the  sweet  Graces  through  the  Idalian  grove 
Led  the  blest  Author  in  their  daunced  rings  ; 

Or  wanton  Nymphs  in  watry  bowres  have  wove,  j 

With  fine  Mylesian  threds,  the  verse  he  sings  ;  j 

Or  curious  Pallas  once  againe  doth  strive 
With  proud  Arachne  for  illustrious  glory,  I 


248  Notes 

And  once  againe  doth  loves  of  gods  revive, 
Spinning  in  silken  twists  a  lasting  story : 
If  none  of  these,  then  Venus  chose  his  sight 
To  leade  the  steps  of  her  blind  sonne  aright. 

Sir  John  Beaumont. 


PAGE 


|o^n  Jflorio. 


14 — XXVI.  This  sonnet,  v^'ith  nothing  to  indicate  its  authorship,  was 
first  printed  prefixed  to  Essayes  written  in  French  by  Michael  Lord 
of  Montaigne,  &'c.,  Done  into  English  by  "John  Flotio.  Second 
Edition.  Lond.  fol.  1613  :  whence  it  is  here  given.  It  reappears 
in  the  third  edition  of  the  same  work,  1632,  but,  so  far  as  I  am 
aware,  has  not  since  been  reprinted,  except  by  Henry  Brown  in  his 
Sonnets  of  Shakespeare  Solved,  1870,  who  was  content  to  give  it 
corruptly  as  he  found  it,  and,  on  what  authority  I  know  not, 
describes  it  as  '  attributed  to  Shakespeare.'  Its  present  ascription 
to  the  '  Resolute  '  himself  is,  it  must  be  confessed,  purely  conjec- 
tural ;  and  since  in  both  editions  of  the  Montaigne  the  sonnet  imme- 
diately follows  (separated,  however,  by  a  line  extending  right  across 
the  page)  a  longish  commendatory  poem  of  a  kindred  character 
addressed  by  Samuel  Daniel  To  my  deare  brother^  and  friend 
M.  John  Florio,  it  is  just  possible  that  the  real  author  was  Daniel, 
of  whom  it  is  abundantly  worthy,  and  indeed  most  characteristic  in 
sentiment  and  diction,  if  not  in  structure.^  A  claim  must  also  in 
justice  be  recognized  for  each  of  those  other  tuneful  friends  of 
Florio's  who  were  wont  to  bring  him  their  votive  wreaths,  in  sonnet- 
form  for  the  most  part,  as  often  as  he  challenged  public  attention  ; 
especially  the  anonymous  writer  of  that  well-turned  sonnet  prefixed 
to  Queen  Anna's  New  World  of  Words,  fol.  1611,  and  subscribed 
with  the  three  stars  [***],  beginning 

'  Kinde  friend,  the  strictnesse  of  these  few-few  lines,' — 
a  writer,  by  the  way,  whom  probably  we  ought  to  identify  with  the' 
friendly  '  gentleman '  referred  to  by  Florio  in  that  famous  address  of 
his  To  the  Reader  in  the  first  edition  of  the  work  just  named  (A 
Worlde  of  Wordes,  4to,  159S),  where  he  is  understood  by  some  com- 
mentators" to  be  wincing  under  Shakspeare's  supposed  caricature  of 

1  That  is,  brother  in  office,  as  one  of  the  Gentlemen  of  the  Royal  Privy  Chamber. 
The  oft-asserted  relationship  of  Florio  and  Daniel  as  brothers-in-law  was  disproved  by 
the  late  Bolton  Corney  in  Notes  and  Queries,  3rd  S.  viii,  July  i,  1865. 

^  Only  three  per  cent,  of  the  sonnets  composing  Delia  are  built  on  the  principle  of 
the  one  in  question. 

'  See  Variorum  Shaksjieare,  ed.  Malone,  1821,  iv,  479-483. 


Notes 


249 


him  in  the  Holofernes  of  Love's  Labour  s  Lost,  acted  in  the  previous 
year.  '  There  is,'  complains  Florio,  'another  sort  of  leering  curs, 
that  rather  snarle  then  bite,  whereof  I  coulde  instance  in  one,  who 
lighting  upon  a  good  sonnet  of  a  gentlemans,  a  friend  of  mine,'  that 
loved  better  to  be  a  Poet  then  to  be  counted  so,  called  the  auctor 
a  rymer,  notwithstanding  he  had  more  skill  in  good  POetrie,  then 
my  slie  gentleman  seemed  to  have  in  good  manners  or  humanitie.' 
But  for  none  of  these,  any  more  than  for  Florio  or  Daniel,  does 
there  exist  the  slightest  particle  of  direct  evidence.  Such  being  the 
case,  it  seems  only  justice  to  assign  the  poem  to  the  author  of  the 
book  containing  it.  Nor  will  this  hypothesis  appear  unreasonable 
to  those  who  can  recall  Florio's  mastery  in  our  English  speech,  his 
affectedly  archaic  but  idiomatic  style,  and  his  persistent  poetical 
ambition.  It  has  also  the  advantage  of  explaining,  satisfactorily  as 
I  think,  the  complete  anonymity  of  the  poem, — the  entire  absence  of 
initials  or  mark  of  any  kind,  which  it  would  almost  certainly  have 
borne,  had  anyone  other  than  Florio  been  responsible  for  it. 
Looking  at  the  position  of  the  sonnet  in  relation  to  Daniel's  elo- 
quent and  friendly  lines,  which,  as  was  stated  above,  had  appeared 
in  the  first  edition  unaccompanied  by  the  sonnet,  I  should  suggest 
that  Florio  took  advantage  of  the  opportunity  which  this  second  edi- 
tion afforded  him  of  paying  a  responsive  tribute  to  the  man  who  had 
done  his  book  honour,  and  who,  be  it  remembered,  as  the  author  of 
The  Civile  Warres  and  The  Historie  of  England,  was  the  most  dis- 
tinguished living  representative  of  those  who 

'  memorize 
And  leave  in  bookes  for  all  posterities 
The  names  of  worthyes,  and  their  vertuous  deedes.'^ 

Unfortunately  the  materials  for  a  study  of  Florio  in  his  poetical  ca- 
pacity are  alike  scanty  and  inaccessible;  but  there  seem  to  be  two 
things  about  which  we  may  feel  pretty  certain:  first,  that,  as  befitted 
the  accredited  representative  of  Italian  culture  at  the  English  court, 
he  occasionally  practised  in  the  sonnet-form  ; "  and,  second,  that 
whatever  his  weakness  of  character,  he  cannot  have  been  the  fool 


'  I  am  aware  that  Warburton  held  the  sonnet  to  have  been  Florio's  own  ;  but  he  can 
hardly  be  allowed  to  have  made  good  his  position  by  assuming  of  a  thing  he  ner'er  saiu 
that  it  'affected  the  letter'  and  was  'parodied  '  in  the  aditerative  'sonnet'  (as  he  calls 
It)  spoken  by  Holofernes  in  Love's  Lahoitr''s  Lost,  iv,  2,  58.  Nor  is  Farmer  any  more 
conclusive  than  Warburton,  the  sonnet  he  cites  as  one  of  Florio's  'to  his  patrons'  not 
being  Florio's  at  all,  but  one  of  a  series  by  //  Candida,  who  is  now  known  to  have  been 
Matthew  Gwinne. 

*  'Samuel  Daniel,  the  most  noted  poet  and  historian  of  his  time,'  as  Anthony  a 
Wood  describes  him  {Athoi.  0.ron.,  ed.  Bliss,  ii,  1815,  col.  268). 

'  See,  for  example,  a  reference  to  one  of  Florio's  sonnets  in  the  heading  of  a  sonnet 
addressed  to  him  by  //  Candida,  prefixed  to  the  first  edition  of  the  Montaigne,  1603. 


250  Notes 

|oI)n  J[Iorio. 
familiar  to  us  in  commentarial  tradition,  as  there  seems  indeed  to  be 
a  disposition  on  tlie  part  of  modern  critics  to  own.'  We  have  seen 
how  Samuel  Daniel  addresses  him.  That  he  had  the  honour  and 
love  of  other  friends,  poets  some  of  them  whose  names  we  would  fain 
know,  th-e  following  beautiful  sonnet  will  here  fitly  attest.  It  is  pre- 
fixed to  Florios  Second  Frutes,  To  be  gathered  of  twelve  Trees,  ^c. , 
4to,  1591,  and  bespeaks  in  the  writer  an  almost  Shakspearian  deli- 
cacy and  freshness  of  touch.  The  '  ever  greene  Laurell '  is  of  course 

Spenser. 

PHOTON  TO  HIS  FRIEND  FLORIO. 

Sweete  friend  whose  name  agrees  with  thy  increase, 

How  fit  a  rivall  art  thou  of  the  Spring? 

For  when  each  branche  hath  left  his  flourishing. 

And  green-lockt  Sommers  shadie  pleasures  cease, 

She  makes  the  Winters  stormes  repose  in  peace, 

And  spends  her  franchise  on  each  living  thing  : 

The  dazies  sprout,  the  little  birds  doo  sing, 

Hearbes,  gummes,  and  plants  do  vaunt  of  their  release. 

So  when  that  all  our  English  witts  lay  dead, 

(Excepit  the  Laurell  that  is  ever  greene,) 

Thou  with  thy  Frutes  our  barrennes  o're-spread, 

And  set  thy  flowrie  pleasance  to  be  seene. 

Sutch  frutes,  sutch  flowrets  of  moralitie. 

Were  nere  before  brought  out  of  Italy. 

Phceton. 

piemorize  =  to  commemorate,  or  cause  to  be  remembered.  The  old 
copies  have  the  disastrous  misprint  '  memorie '  here,  the  printer 
having  evidently  been  put  out  by  the  intransitive  use  of  the  verb 
'deserve.'  I  have  doubtless  recovered  the  true  lection.  Cp. 
Spenser's  sonnet  to  Lord  Buckhust,  prefixed  to  The  Faetie  Qiieene  : 

'  In  vain  I  thinke,  right  honourable  Lord, 
By  this  rude  rime  to  memorize  thy  name  ; ' 

and  John  Davies  of  Hereford's  to  Sr.  yohn  Popham,  subjoined  to 
his  Alicrocosmos,  1603  (Complete  Works,  ed.  Grosart,  Chertsey 
Worthies  Lib.,  1878,  i,  gS)  : 

'  If  best  deservers  of  the  publike  weale 
Should  not  be  memorized  of  the  Muse, 
Shee  should  her  proper  vertue  so  conceale, 
And  so  conceal'd,  should  that  and  them  abuse.' 

For  other  instances  see  Shakspeare  {Macbeth,  i,  2,  40) ;  Drayton 
{Polyolbion,  S.  5,  41) ;  Sonnet  initialed  '  S.  S.,'  prefixed  to  Sir  A. 

1  See  Joseph  Hunter's  Nein  Illustrations  0/  the  Life,  Studies,  and  Writings  of 
Shakespeare,  1845,  i,  261,  273-281.  Mr.  Massey  must  cast  about  for  some  other  'fitting 
candidate'  for  identification  as  the  '  heavy  ignorance '  of  Shakspeare 's  78th  Sonnet. 


Notes  ■ 


25' 


Gorges'  translation  of  Lticmi's  Pharsalia,  1614  ;  &c.  LI,  7-8,  Cp. 
Eccles.  ix,  5-6.  1-8  Florio,  who  in  the  Epistle  Dedicatorie  of  his 
Second  Frutes  calls  Spenser  '  the  sweetest  singer  of  all  our  westerne 
shepheards,'  seems  to  have  been  haunted  by  a  passage  in  the  Teares 
of  the  Muses  here  (Globe  Spenser,  p.  502,  col.  i).  in  respect  Of^=  in 
comparison  with  —  a  rare  usage  ;  e.g.  Hackluyt's  Voyages,  iii,  33 
(«/?^^  Richardson,  ed.  1875)  :  '  To  whose  diligence  imminent  dan- 
gers and  difficult  attempts  seemed  nothing,  in  respect  of  his  willing 
mind,  for  the  commoditie  of  his  prince  and  countrey.' 


CVi 


With  an  exception  perhaps  in  favour  of  Raleigh's  prose,  general 
opinion  seems  to  confirm  the  verdict  of  Hallam,  that '  the  first  good  prose 
writer,  in  any  positive  sense  of  the  word,  is  Sir  Philip  Sidney.' '  An  im- 
partial judgment  will  probably  accord  him  a  like  distinction  in  sonnet- 
writing.  He  made  a  special  study  of  Italian  metres  and  modes  of  ex- 
pression at  a  time  when  it  was  of  peculiar  importance  that  good  models 
should  be  kept  in  view  ;  and  his  most  beautiful  poems  take  the  form  of 
the  sonnet.  Those  both  of  the  Arcadia  and  Astrophel  and  Stella  unite 
with  rare  charms  of  speech  a  rhythmical  melody  previously  all  but 
unknown  in  our  literature,  many  of  them  having  the  veritable  '  sweete 
attractive  kinde  of  grace  '  ascribed  by  old  Matthew  Roydon  to  the  much- 
loved  poet  himself — a  grace  which  their  frequent  quaintness  rather  en- 
hances than  impairs,  as  one  sings  to-day  of  the  Silurist's  poems : 

'  So  quaintly  fashioned  as  to  add  a  grace 
To  the  sweet  fancies  which  they  bear. 
Even  as  a  bronze  delved  from  some  ancient  place 
For  very  rust  shows  fair. '  ^ 

How  Charles  Lamb  delighted  in  their  veiy  extravagancies  ! — the  '  glori- 
ous vanities '  so  pathetically  abjured  at  last  in  xxxiii.  '  They  are  stuck 
full  of  amorous  fancies — far-fetched  conceits,  befitting  his  occupation  ; 
for  True  Love  thinks  no  labour  to  send  out  Thoughts  upon  the  vast,  and 
more  than  Indian  voyages,  to  bring  home  rich  pearls,  outlandish  wealth, 
gums,  jewels,  spicery,  to  sacrifice  in  self-depreciating  similitudes,  as 
shadows  of  true  amiabilities  in  the  Beloved.' ^  They  contain  whole 
passages  of  sustained  beauty,  and  '  abound,'  as  Elia  again  puts  it,  '  in 
felicitous  phrases  : ' 

'  O  heav'nly  foole,  thy  most  kisse-worthie  face.* 

1  Literature  0/  Europe,  5th  ed.  1855,  ii,  296. 

^  To  an  Unknown  Poet  (Songs  0/  Two   Worlds,  by  a  New  Writer,  2nd  series, 
1874,  p.  3). 
'  The  Last  Essays  of  Elia,  1833,  p.  139. 


252  Notes 

'  Smooth  pillowes,  sweetest  bed, 
A  chamber  deafe  of  noise  and  blind  of  light, 
O  rosie  garland  and  a  wearie  hed.' 

'  that  sweet  enemy,  Fraunce.' 

'  my  Muse,  to  some  eares  not  unsweet, 
Tempers  her  words  to  trampling  horses'  feete 
More  oft  than  to  a  chamber  melodic.' 

'  Not  by  rude  force,  but  sweetest  soveraigntie 
Of  reason.' ' 

But  Sidney's  sonnets  have  strength  as  well  as  sweetness  ;  and  the 
thoughtfulness  and  earnestness  of  spirit  by  which  they  are  imbued  ought 
effectually  to  distinguish  them  from  those  vehicles  of  spurious  and  inane 
passion  wherewith  they  have  sometimes  inconsiderately  been  classed. 
How  far  different  they  are  from  mere  literary  exercises  or  pastimes  the 
reader  will  best  learn  from  a  study  of  the  complete  poems,  Songs  as  well 
as  Sonnets,  in  connection  with  those  facts  in  the  poet's  life  of  which  we 
may  reasonably  recognize  the  impress  on  his  verse  ;  and  it  is  no  more 
than  the  truth  to  say  that  this  has  only  of  late  been  rendered  practicable 
for  ordinary  students  by  the  publication  of  Dr.  Grosart's  edition  of 
Sidney  (3  vols.,  Lond.,  1877).  A  passage  in  Milton's  Eikonoklastes 
(Works,  ed.  Mitford,  1851,  iii,  346)  is  frequently  cited  as  impugning  the 
moral  character  of  Sidney's  chief  work, — '  the  vaine  amatorious  Poem  of 
Sir  Philip  Sidneys  Arcadia.^  It  ought  to  be  borne  in  mind  that  Milton's 
criticism  was  made,  and  is  therefore  to  be  understood,  not  in  an  absolute 
but  in  a  relative  sense — entirely  with  reference  to  the  circumstances  in 
which  the  book  had  been  used  by  the  king  :  a  book  in  kind  '  full  of 
worth  and  witt,'  as  he  continues,  but  not  worthy  '  in  time  of  trouble 
and  affliction  to  be  a  Christians  Prayer-Book.'  A  modern  worshipper 
and  imitator  of  the  '  starry  paladin,'  as  Mr.  Browning  has  called  Sidney, 
bestows  the  following  united  tribute  on  him  and  Spenser  (6V/^<://'f^;«j, 
1821,  p.  9)  :— 

ON     BEHOLDING      THE     PORTRAITURE     OF 

SIR  PHILIP  SIDNEY  IN  THE  GALLERY  AT  PENSHURST. 

The  man  that  looks,  sweet  Sidney,  in  thy  face, 
Beholding  there  love's  truest  majesty. 
And  the  soft  image  of  departed  grace. 
Shall  fill  his  mind  with  magnanimity  : 
There  may  he  read  unfeign'd  humility. 
And  golden  pity,  born  of  heav'nly  brood. 
Unsullied  thoughts  of  immortality. 
And  musing  virtue,  prodigal  of  blood  : 

*  Cp.  the  phrase  '  sweet  reasonableness.' 


Notes  253 

Yes,  in  this  map  of  what  is  fair  and  good, 
This  glorious  index  of  a  heav'nly  book, 
Not  seldom,  as  in  youthful  years  he  stood, 
Divinest  Spenser  would  admiring  look  ; 
And,  framing  thence  high  wit  and  pure  desire, 
Imagin'd  deeds,  that  set  the  world  on  fire. 

Lord  Thurlow} 

PAGE 

14 — XXVII.  posy:  first  4to  1591  and  fol.  1598  '  Poesie,'  second  4to 
1591 'Poems.'  5-6.  '  Alliteration  is  "  dictionary's  "  or  alphabetical 
method  ;  and  1.  6  sarcastically  illustrates  this.  Dryden  has  a  similar 
conjunction  of  rhyming  and  rattling,  though  he  is  not  attacking 
Doeg-Settle  on  the  score  of  alliteration  : 

"  He  was  too  warm  on  picking-work  to  dwell. 
But  faggoted  his  notions  as  they  fell. 
And,  if  they  rhymed  and  rattled,  all  was  well." 

{Abs.  andAchit. ,  Pt.  II,  418).  Sidney  himself  is  alliterative  beyond 
what  one  would  expect  from  these  lines.' — Grosart.  denizened  = 
Naturalized  in  English  ;  far-fet  =  far-fetched. 
15— XXVIII.  ivan.  Other  texts  read  '  meane,'  which  Dr.  Grosart 
observes  may  '  in  Sidney's  time  have  been  an  adjectival  use  of 
mean  or  w^«^  =  lamenting,' however  intolerable  in  our  present 
sense.  But  the  epithet  wan,  applied  to  the  moon,  has  passed  into 
our  ordinary  poetical  vocabulary  ;  e.g.,  Mr.  Ruskin's  early  poem 
of  The  Months  {Poems.     J.  R.,  Collected  1S50,  p.  23) : 

'  the  wan  and  weary  moon  ; ' 
and  Cornelius  Webbe's  Lyric  Leaves,  1832,  p.  119  : 

'  Oh  Moon,  it  is  a  passionate  delight 
To  pore  upon  thy  beautiful  wan  face.' 

1-2  Wordsworth  {Miscellaneous  Satinets,  Pt.  11,  17)  borrows  more  of 

these  lines  than  he  acknowledges.     14  '  The  last  line  of  this  poem 

is  a  little  obscured  by  transposition.     He  means,  Do  they  call 

ungratefulness  there  a  virtue?' — Charles  Lamb.     Sidney  has  been 

beautifully  echoed  in  one  of  Shelly's  fragments  (ed.  Fonnan,  1877, 

iv,  61)  : 

'  TO    THE  MOON. 

Art  thou  pale  for  M'eariness 
Of  climbing  heaven  and  gazing  on  the  earth, 

Wandering  companionless 
Among  the  stars  that  have  a  different  birth, — 
And  ever  changing,  like  a  joyless  eye 
That  finds  no  object  worth  its  constancy?' 

1  First  printed  in  his  lordship's  private  edition  of  Sidney's  Defence  of  Poesy,  iSio. 
A  biographer  of  Sidney  (' S.  M,  D,',  Boston,  3rd  ed.,  1859,  p.  278)  mistakenly  quotes 
it  as  Campbell's, 


254  Notef 

An  obscure  contemporary  of  Sidney  has  an  address  to  the  Moon 
which  an  undue  licence  in  the  rimes  scarcely  disqualifies  from  a 
place  among  the  best  (Davison's  Poeticall  Rapsodie,  1602,  The 
Fourth  Impression,  1621,  p.  83) : 

A    SONNET   OF    THE   MO  ONE. 
Looke  how  the  pale  Queene  of  the  silent  night 
Doth  cause  the  Ocean  to  attend  upon  her, 
And  he  as  long  as  she  is  in  his  sight, 
With  his  full  tide  is  ready  her  to  honor  ; 
But  when  the  silver  wagon  of  the  Moone 
Is  mounted  up  so  high  he  cannot  follow, 
The  sea  cals  home  his  christall  waves  to  mone, 
-  And  with  low  ebbe  doth  manifest  his  sorrow  : 
So  you  that  are  the  soveraigne  of  my  heart. 
Have  all  my  joyes  attending  on  your  will. 
My  joyes  low  ebbing  when  you  doe  depart. 
When  you  returne,  their  tide  my  heart  doth  fill. 
So  as  you  come,  and  as  you  doe  depart  • 

Joyes  ebbe  and  flow  within  my  tender  heart. 

Charles  Best.^ 

XXIX,  4.  Cf.  Drummond,  cxiv,  3.  prease  =  press,  throng.  10. 
of  .  .  .  of :  adopted  from  the  texts  of  1591  as  preferable  to  the 
'  to  .  .  .  to  '  of  1598.  Perhaps  Dr.  Trench's  via  viedia,  '  to  .  .  .  of,' 
is  best  {Household Book  of  Eiig.  Poetr)',  p.  29).  11.  '  "  rosie  gar- 
land" as  the  garland  of  silence  (  j«/^  rosa  ) — a  pun  that  would  have 
delighted  Thomas  Fuller,  and  Charles  Lamb  if  he  had  noticed  it.' — 
Grosart.  This  invocation  should  be  compared  with  those  of  Daniel 
(XLVI),  Drummond  (cxiv),  Wordsworth  (cLXXXill-CLXXXiv),  Keats 
(cccviii),  and  others.  The  sonnet  immediately  preceding  it  in 
Astrophel  and  Sella  is  worth  quoting  here  : 

(38) 
This  night,  while  sleepe  begins  with  heavy  wings 
To  hatch  mine  eyes,  and  that  unbitted  thought 
Doth  fall  to  stray,  and  my  chiefe  powres  are  brought 
To  leave  the  scepter  of  all  subject  things  ; 
The  first  that  straight  my  fancies  error  brings 
Unto  my  mind  is  Stellas  image,  wrought 
By  Loves  owne  selfe,  but  with  so  curious  drought 

>  Except  that  he  contributed  a  handful  of  verses  to  the  old  miscellany  named, 
hardly  anything  is  known  of  Best.  See,  however,  some  particulars  in  Joseph  Hunter's 
Chorus  Vatttm  Anglicanortim,  1851,  v,  497  (Addit.  MSS.  Mus.  Brit..  24,491)  and 
the  miscellaneous  volume  24,493,  p.  226.  An  anonymous  writer  in  The  London 
Magazine  for  October,  1823— possibly  Charles  Lamb— called  attention  to  the  sonnet, 
introducing  it  thus  :  '  Among  our  older  poets  are  some  whose  genius  was  perfect  in  one 
or  two  smaller  instances,  but  whose  powers  were  never  exerted  on  any  larger 
•work, — at  least  no  proof  of  it  has  been  put  on  record  :  of  this  number  was  Charles 
Best,  the  author  of  the  following  sonnet.' 


Notes  255 

PAGE 

That  she,  methinks,  not  onely  shines  but  sings. 

I  start,  looke,  hearke  ;  but  what  in  closde  up  sence 

Was  held,  in  opend  sense  it  flies  away, 

Leaving  me  nought  but  wailing  eloquence. 

I,  seeing  better  sights  in  sights  decay, 

Cald  it  anew,  and  wooed  sleepe  againe  ; 

But  him  her  host  that  unkind  guest  had  slaine. 

• 

16 — XXX.   For  an  account  of  this  jousting,  doubtless  that  which  took 

place  15-16  May,  1581,  and  for  many  other  particulars  regarding 
the  probable  circumstances  and  dates  of  these  sonnets,  see  Mr. 
Arber's  English  Gamer,  vol.  i,  1877. 

XXX,  6.  who  :  'which'  (1591).  14.  Cf.  the  close  of  Petrarca's 
137th  Sonnet,  and,  for  comment,  Shakspeare  (Z'tc^  Gentlemen  of 
Verona,  ii,  2,  16) : 

'  What  !  gone  without  a  word  ? 
Ay,  so  true  love  should  do  :  it  cannot  speak  ; 
For  truth  hath  better  deeds  than  words  to  grace  it.' 

In  a  copy  of  the  first  edition  of  Astrophel  and  Stella  which  once 
belonged  to  Anthony  a  Wood  there  is  written  over  against  this 
sonnet,  in  the  antiquary's  own  beautiful  handwriting :  '  Amor 
levis  loquif,  ingens  silet ; '  and  on  the  title-page  : 

'  Well  in  the  Ring  there  is  the  Ruby  sett, 
Where  comly  shape,  &  vertue  both  are  mett.' 

A  fourteen-lined  poem  of  Herrick's  ('  sonnet '  one  hesitates  to  call 
it,  like  his  Dean-hoiirn,  also  of  fourteen  lines)  suggests  some  inter- 
esting parallels  {Poems,  ed.  Grosart,  1876,  i,  25)  : 

TO  HIS  MISTRESSE  OBJECTING  TO  HIM  NEITHER 

TOYING   NOR   TALKING. 

You  say  I  love  not,  'cause  I  doe  not  play 

Still  with  your  curies,  and  kisse  the  time  away. 

You  blame  me  too,  because  I  cann't  devise 

Some  sport,  to  please  those  Babies  in  your  eyes  : 

By  Loves  Religion,  I  must  here  confesse  it, 

The  most  I  love,  when  I  the  least  expresse  it. 

Small  griefs  find  tongues  :   Full  Casques  are  ever  found 

To  give,  (if  any,  yet)  but  little  sound. 

Deepe  waters  noyse-lesse  are  ;  And  this  we  know, 

That  chiding  streams  betray  small  depth  below. 

So  when  Love  speechlesse  is,  she  doth  expresse 

A  depth  in  love,  and  that  depth,  bottomlesse. 

Now  since  my  love  is  tongue-lesse,  know  me  such, 

Who  speak  but  little,  'cause  I  love  so  much. 

Robert  Herri ck. ' 

1  L.  4.  For  examples  of  this  '  sportive  conceit '  see  Grosart's  ed.  of  Marvell,  i, 
1872,  114,  and  add  T.  Lodge  (Sciilaes  Metamorphosis,  1589,  p.  24,  Hiinterian  Club 
ed.  1876),  N.  Breton  (Pasquils  Fooles-Cap,  1600,  p.  20,  ed.  Grosart,  1876),  and  R. 
Chester  {Loire's  Martyr,   1601,  p.  4,  New  ShaJc.  Soc.  ed.  1878).     7  Seneca's  '  Curae 


256  Notes 


PAGE 


17— XXXII.  I  cannot  forbear  appending  the  two  following  additional 
examples,  the  latter  of  which,  and  the  two  on  page  15,  were  the  three 
special  favourites  of  Sidney's  gentle  apologist,  Charles  Lamb  : — 


(84)  ,1 

Highway,  since  you  my  chiefe  Pemassus  be,                        *  ' 

And  that  my  Muse,  to  some  eares  not  unsweet,  j 

Tempers  her  words  to  trampling  horses  feet  ! 

More  oft  then  to  a  chamber  melodic.  j 

Now  blessed  you,  beare  onward  blessed  me  = 

To  her,  where  I  my  heart  safeleft  shall  meet,  | 

My  Muse  and  I  must  you  of  dutie  greet  ' 

With  thankes  and  wishes,  wishing  thankfully.  | 

Be  you  still  carefull  kept  by  publike  heed,  , 

By  no  encrochment  wrongd,  nor  time  forgot :  j 

Nor  blam'd  for  bloud,  nor  sham'd  for  sinfull  deed.  1 
And  that  you  know  I  envy  you  no  lot 

Of  highest  wish,  I  wish  you  so  much  blisse,  \ 

Hundreds  of  yeares  you  Stellas  feet  may  kisse.'  j 

(  103  )  \ 

0  happie  Tems,  that  didst  my  Stella  beare,  \ 

1  saw  thee  with  full  many  a  smiling  line  ■  ! 
Upon  thy  cheerefuU  face  joy's  livery  weare  :  I 
While  those  faire  planets  on  thy  streames  did  shine. 

The  bote  for  joy  could  not  to  daunce  forbeare, 

While  wanton  winds  with  beauties  so  devine  j 

leves  loquuntur,  ingentes  stupent : '  cf.  Shakspeare  (Macbeth,  iv,  3.  209),  S.  Daniel  ! 

(Co)iiplaint  0/ Rosamond,  1593,  st.  114,  ed.  1602,  sig.  Niiii)  :  i 

'  Striving  to  tell  his  woes,  words  would  not  come  ;  \ 

For  light  cares  speak,  when  mighty  griefs  are  dombe.'  i 

Webster  {White  Devil,  ed.  Dyce,  1830,  i,  43),  and  Dekker-and- Webster  {Fatnous  j 
Hist.  0/  Sir    Tho.  Wyatt,  ed.  Dyce.  1857,  p.  201).      Casques  :=  casks.     9-10  '  A  clas- 
sical common-place  from  Ovid  onward,  and  frequent  in  the  Elizabethan  poets'  (Gro-  ] 
sart) ;  e.g.,  Sidney's  Eclogue   [Arcadia.,  Lib.  i,  p.  74,  ed.   1598) ;    Raleigh's  Silent  \ 
Lorver  (Dr.  Hannah's  Courtly  Poets,  1870,  p.  20)  :  ] 

'  Passions  are  likened  best  to  floods  and  streams  :  ' 

The  shallow  murmur,  but  the  deep  are  dumb ;  \ 

So,  when  affections  yield  discourse,  it  seems  ,  ] 

The  bottom  is  but  shallow  whence  they  come  ; ' 
Earl  of  Sterline's  Aurora,  1604,  Song  i  : 

'The  deepest  rivers  make  least  din. 
The  silent  soule  doth  most  abound  in  care  ; ' 

and  W.  Browne's  Britannia''s  Pastorals,  1625,  Booke  i.  Song  5,  p.  ii8.  For  other 
examples  see  Dr.  Hannah's  earlier  volume,  Poems  by  Sir  Henry  IVotton,  Sir  Walter 
Raleigh,  and  Others,  1845,  p.  xli,  Intro.  LI.  13-14  Echoed  to-day  in  JNIr.  Browning's 
song: 

'  I  touch 
But  cannot  praise,  I  love  so  much' — 
doubtless  in  both  cases  recollected  from  Shakspeare's  io6th  Sonnet  (xciii,  14  :  supra, 
p.  47). 

*  L.  9.  Adopted  from  eds.  of  1 591  as  better  than  1598  : 

'  Be  you  still  faire,  honourd  by  publike  heed.' 


257 


PAGE 


Notes 

Ravisht,  staid  not,  till  in  her  golden  haire 
They  did  themselves  (O  sweetest  prison)  twine. 
And  faine  those  yEols  youth  there  would  their  stay 
Have  made,  but  forst  by  Nature  still  to  flie. 
First  did  with  puffing  kisse  those  lockes  display : 
She,  so  discheveld,  blusht ;  from  window  I 
With  sight  thereof  cride  out,  O  faire  disgrace, 
Let  honor  selfe  to  thee  graunt  highest  place.' 

14-17 — xxvii-xxxil.  First  printed  in  4to.  Sir  P.  S.  his  A  strop  hel  and 
Stella.      Wherein  the  excellence  of  sweete  Poesie  is  concluded.   1591. 

17 — xxxill.  One  of  Certaine  Sonets  written  by  Sir  Philip  Sidney  : 
N^ever  before priitied.  Arcadia,  1598.  Dr.  Grosart  has  doubtless 
assigned  it  its  proper  place  as  concluding  the  Asirophel  and  Stella 
series.     L.  i.  Cf.  Drummond's  Song  {Poems,  1616,  sig.  I4)  : 

'  O  leave  that  Love  which  reacheth  but  to  Dust, 
And  in  that  Love  eternall  only  trust. 
And  Beautie,  which,  when  once  it  is  possest, 
Can  only  fill  the  Soule,  and  make  it  blest.' 

rich.     It  is  perhaps  unnecessary  to  remind  the  reader  of  Stella's 
married  name — Lady  Rich,     evil :  pronounced  as  a  monosyllable, 
and  ultimately  contracted  to  ill.     The  sonnet  should  be  compared 
with  Shakspeare's  146th  (see  cv,  with  note). 
18-xxxiv,  5.  Cf.  Shakspeare  (Macbeth,  i,  3,  137)  : 

'  Present  fears 
Are  less  than  horrible  imaginings  ; '  ^ 

and  Wordsworth  (Ecclesiastical  Sonnets,  Pt.  1,7): 

'  For  all  things  are  less  dreadful  than  they  seem.' 

evil :  see  remark  under  xxxiil.  The  thoughts,  and  too  often  per- 
haps the  very  language  of  Sidney's  sonnet — of  which  the  opening 
argument  is,  as  Leigh  Hunt  observes,  a  favourite  one  of  M.  Aure- 
lius  Antoninus  (Meditations,  transl.  Long,  1862,  ii,  17  ;  vi,  10,  44  ; 
ix,  28  ;  X,  I,  6) — are  reiterated  by  Drummond  in  his  Cypresse  Grove  : 
e.g.,  '  If  Death  bee  good,  why  should  it  bee  feared,  and  if  it  bee 
the  worke  of  Nature,  how  should  it  not  bee  good  ? '  (ed.  1630,  p.  76). 
It  ought  to  be  read  in  connection  with  the  noble  dialogue  in  the  5th 
Book  of  the  Arcadia  where  it  occurs.  The  friends  Musidorus  and 
Pyrocles,  on  the  eve  of  what  seemed  certain  doom,  comfort  each 
other  in  speculations  on  the  condition  of  the  soul  after  death  ;  and 
Musidorus,  'looking  with  a  heavenly  joy  upon  him,'  sings  the 
'Song'  to  his  companion. — Arcadia,  p.  445,  ed.  1598. 


>  L.  2.  thee  ■with/till  (1591)  :  '  thy  selfe  with'  (1598). 
^  fears  =  objects  of  fear. 

R 


258  Notes 


PAGE 


14-18— XXVII-XXXIV.  Unless  otherwise  stated,  the  text  followed  in  all 
the  examples  from  Sidney  is  that  of  The  Countesse  of  Pembrokes 
Arcadia.  Written  by  Sir  Philip  Sidney,  Knight.  Noiu  the  Third 
Time  published,  with  sundry  new  additions  of  the  same  Author. 
1598,  fol. 

^cnrg  Constable. 

18 — XXXV.  This  first  example  from  the  Diana  (1594)  of  him  who  won 
'  rare  Ben's '  praise, ^whose 

'  ambrosiack  muse 
Made  Dian  not  his  notes  refuse  ' — 

bears  a  noticeable  resemblance  to  Shakspeare's  ggth  Sonnet  (see 
LXXXIX,  with  note).  A  Scottish  contemporary,  William  Alexander 
of  Menstrie  (Earl  of  Sterline  to  be)  could  extol  his  Aurora's  beauty 
in  such  like  delicate  fancies,  and  with  almost  equal  grace  {Aurora, 
1604,  Song  7)  : 

'  The  Roses  did  the  rosie  hue  envy 
Of  those  sweet  lips  that  did  the  Bees  deceave, 
That  colour  oft  the  Lillies  wish'd  to  have, 
Which  did  the  Alablaster  piller  dye, 
On  which  all  beauties  glorie  did  rely  ; 
Her  breath  so  sweetly  smell'd. 
The  Violets,  as  excell'd. 
To  looke  downe  wer6  compell'd  ; 
And  so  contest  what  foile  they  did  receave.' 

5.     her:  '  the  '  (MS.) 
19 — XXXVI.   '  The  most  exquisite  of  his  sonnets  for  sweet  colour  and 

winning  fancy.' — W.  Minto  {Characteristics  of  English  Poets  from 

Chaucer  to  Shirley,  1874,  p.  257). 
20 — XXXVIII.  One  of  the  Spii-ituall  Sonnettes  to  the  Honour  of  God 

and Hys  Sayntes,  first  printed  by  T.  Park,  Heliconia,  ii,  181 5.    LI. 

5-7.     '  A  slight  deviation  from  the  MS.  has  here  been  hazarded. 

The  latter  reads  : — 

But  syth,  they'r  graced  which  from  nature  sprynge. 
We're  grac'd  by  those  which  from  grace  dyd  proceede, 
And  glory  hath  deserved  ; — 

which  is  perfectly  unintelligible.' —  W.  C.  Hazlitt.  For  a  beautiful 
narration  of  the  legend  of  St.  Katharine,  see  Mrs.  Jameson's  Sacred 
and  Legendary  Art.  2nd  ed.  1850,  p.  276.  Two  other  examples 
from  the  same  series  may  be  added  here,  on  the  former  of  which  a 
Catholic  writer  remarks  {Dublin  Review,  October,  1876,  p.  421) 
that  '  in  comparing  it  with  Wordsworth's  beautiful  sonnet  on-  The 
Virgin  [page  116],  the  Catholic  reader  will  be  struck  by  the  accuracy 


Notes  259 

PAGE 

with  which  Constable  presents  the  Catholic  doctrine  of  the  Im- 
maculate Conception,  where  Wordsworth  dwells  only  on  the 
personal  sinlessness  of  Mary,' 

TO  OUR  BLESSED  LADY. 
In  that,  O  Queene  of  queenes  !  thy  byrth  was  free 
From  guylt,  which  others  do  of  grace  bereave, 
"When  in  theyr  mothers  wombe  they  lyfe  receave, 
God,  as  his  sole-borne  daughter  loved  thee  ; 
To  matche  thee  lyke  thy  byrthes  nobillitye, 
He  thee  hys  Spyryt  for  thy  spouse  dyd  leave 
Of  whome  thou  dydd'st  his  onely  Sonne  conceave, 
And  so  was  lynk'd  to  all  the  Trinitye. 
Cease  then,  O  queenes  !  who  earthly  crownes  do  weare. 
To  glory  in  the  pompe  of  worldly  thynges  : 
If  men  such  hyghe  respect  unto  you  beare. 
Which  daughters,  wyves,  and  mothers  ar  of  kynges  ; 
What  honour  sliould  unto  that  Queene  be  donne 
Who  had  your  God  for  father,  spowse,  and  sonne  ? ' 

TO  OUR  BLESSED  LADY. 
Why  should  I  any  love,  O  queene  !  but  thee, 
If  favour  past  a  thankfull  love  should  breed  ? 
Thy  wombe  did  beare,  thy  brest  my  Saviour  feede, 
And  thou  dydd'st  never  cease  to  succour  me. 
If  love  doe  followe  worth  and  dignitye. 
Thou  all  in  thy  perfections  doest  exceede  ;  • 

If  Love  be  ledd  by  hope  of  future  meede, 
What  pleasure  more  then  thee  in  heaven  to  see  ? 
An  earthly  syght  doth  onely  please  the  eye, 
And  breedes  desyre,  but  dcth  not  satisfye  : 
Thy  sight  gyves  us  possession  of  all  joye. 
And  with  such  full  delyghtes  ech  sense  shall  fyll. 
As  harte  shall  wyshe  but  for  to  see  thee  styll. 
And  ever  seeyng,  ever  shall  injoye." 

18-20 — xxxv-xxxviii.  Given  from  W.  C.  Hazlitt's  ed.  of  Constable's 
Poems,  1859.  As  a  last  specimen  from  this  fine  sonneteer  take  this 
first  of  four  sonnets  prefixed  to  Sidney's  Apologie  for Poetrie,  1595: — 

TO  SIR  PHILLIP  SIDNEYS  SOULE. 
Give  pardon  (blessed  Soule)  to  my  bold  cryes. 
If  they  (importund)  interrupt  thy  song. 
Which  nowe  with  joyfull  notes  thou  sing'st,  among 
The  Angel-Quiristers  of  heav'nly  skyes  : 

1  This  sonnet,  with  a  few  immaterial  variations,  appears  in  Dr.  Grosart's  ed.  of 
Donne's  Poeiiis,  2  vols.,  187-23,  ii,  291,  annotated  thus:  'Written,  I  assume,  while 
Donne  was  yet  a  Roman  Catholic,  as  he  receives  the  dogma  of  the  immaculate  con- 
ception. We  Protestants,  on  the  other  hand,  forget,  in  our  panic,  what  "  is  written  " 
in  St.  Luke  i,  28,  42.  From  Stephens'  MS.'  Surely  the  internal  evidence  alone  for 
Constable  is  such  as  to  leave  little  doubt  of  the  character  of  the  document  on  which 
Donne's  claim  rests. 

*  meede  —  rewaid.     Hazlitt  prints 'meedes.' 


26o  Notes 


PAGE 


Penrg  Constable. 

Give  pardon  eake  (sweet  Soule)  to  my  slow  cries, 

That  since  I  saw  thee  now  it  is  so  long, 

And  yet  the  teares  that  unto  thee  belong. 

To  thee  as  yet  they  did  not  sacrifice  ; 

I  did  not  know  that  thou  wert  dead  before, 

I  did  not  feele  the  griefe  I  did  susteine, 

"  The  greater  stroke  astonisheth  the  more, 

"Astonishment  takes  from  us  sence  of  paine  ; 

I  stood  amaz'd  when  others  teares  begun. 

And  now  begin  to  weepe,  when  they  have  doone,' 

S^bomas  ITobge. 

20 — XXXIX.  The  22nd  Sonnet  of  Phillis  •  Honoured  with  Pastorall 
Sonnets,  Elegies,  and  a/norous  delights.  &c.  1593.  '  Lodge's  love- 
poems  have  an  exquisite  delicacy  and  grace  :  they  breathe  a  tenderer 
and  truer  passion  than  we  find  in  any  of  his  contemporaries.  His 
sonnet^  are  more  loose  and  straggling,  slighter  and  less  compactly 
built,  than  Constable's  or  Daniel's ;  but  they  have  a  wonderful  charm 
of  sweet  fancy  and  unaffected  tenderness.  His  themes  are  the  usual 
praises  of  beauty  and  complaints  of  unkindness  ;  but  he  contrives  to 
impart  to  them  a  most  unusual  air  of  sincere  devotion  and  graceful 
fervour.  None  of  his  rivals  can  equal  the  direct  and  earnest  simpli- 
city and  grace  of  his  adoration  of  Phyllis,  and  avowal  of  faith  in  her 
constancy.  There  is  a  seeming  artlessness  in  Lodge's  sonnets,  a 
winning  directness,  that  constitutes  a  great  part  of  their  charm. 
They  seem  to  be  uttered  through  a  clear  and  pure  medium  straight 
from  the  heart  :  their  tender  fragrance  and  music  come  from  the 
heart  itself.'  W.  Minto  {Characteristics,  Sec,  as  before,  p.  259). 
Unhappily  in  the  sonnets  these  graces  go  hand  in  hand  with  very 
grievous  deformities  ;  else  a  single  specimen  would  hardly  suffice 
here  from  the  author  of  J?osaline — that '  gorgeous  Vision  of  Beauty,' 
as  Mr.  Palgrave  justly  calls  it — the  charming  Rosalind's  Madrigal, 
and  the  equally  charming  lyrics  in  honour  of  Phyllis.  All  the  son- 
nets in  the  Phillis,  a  work  of  the  most  tantalizing  inequality,  suffer 
more  or  less  from  Lodge's  caprices  of  style  ;  so  that  while  only  a 
necessary  discretion  is  exercised  in  limiting  the  selection  to  a  single 
sonnet,  it  has  been  too  frequently  at  a  sacrifice  of  beauties  which 
one  would  fain  pluck  from  their  commonplace  environment.  How 
infinitely  tender  is  the  opening  of  the  5th  Sonnet,  for  example  : — 

'  Ah  pale  and  dying  infant  of  the  springe, 
How  rightly  now  do  I  resemble  thee  : 

•  L.  2  {importund)  =  importune,  in  the  sense  of  violent,  as  in  Spenser,  Faerie 
Queene,  i,  xi,  53.  LI.  n-12  See  foot-note  1.  7  of  Herrick's  sonnet,  supra,  p.  255. 


Notes  261 

That  selfesame  hand  that  thee  from  stalke  did  wringe, 
Hath  rent  my  breast  and  robd  my  heart  from  mee.' 

or  that  of  the  7th  :— 

'  How  languisheth  the  Primrose  of  loves  garden  ? 

Ah  Roses,  loves  faire  Roses  do  not  languish, 

Blush  through  the  milk-white  vaile  that  holdes  you  covered.' 

The  9th  will  bear  to  be  quoted  entire  :  it  is  only  at  the  very  close 
that  it  breaks  down  : — 

The  dewie-Roseate  morne  had  with  hir  haires 

In  sundrie  sorts  the  Indian  Clime  adornd, 

And  now  hir  eies  apparrailed  in  teares. 

The  losse  of  lovely  Memnon  long  had  moomd  ; 

When  as  she  spide  the  Nimph  whom  I  admire, 

Kembinge  hir  locks,  of  which  the  yelow  golde 

Made  blush  the  beauties  of  hir  curled  wire, 

Which  heaven  it  selfe  with  wonder  might  beholde. 

Then  redd  with  shame,  hir  reverend  locks  she  rent, 

And  weeping  hid  the  beauty  of  hir  face  ; 

The  flower  of  fancie  wrought  such  discontent. 

The  sighes  which  midst  the  aire  she  breathd  a  space, 

A  three  daies  stormie  tempest  did  maintaine, 

Hir  shame  a  fire,  hir  eies  a  swelling  raine. 

There  seems  no  reason  to  question  Mr.  Minto's  opinion  that  Lodge's 
temperament  was  not  specially  fitted  for  the  sonnet  form  of  compo- 
sition. The  two  examples  given  are  by  much  his  best.  Mr.  Collier 
{Biblio.  Acct.  Eng.  Lit.,  i,  1865,  468),  animadverting  on  Dyce  for 
not  having  represented  Lodge  in  his  Specimens  of  English  Sonnets, 
1833,  overstates,  I  think,  the  value  of  the  Phillis  for  the  purposes  of 
such  a  work.  With  one  or  two  exceptions  Lodge's  books  have  long 
been  practically  inaccessible.  It  was  therefore  well-timed  energy 
recently  on  the  part  of  the  Hunterian  Club,  Glasgow,  to  print  a 
complete  edition  of  our  poet's  original  works.  As  Mr.  Collier 
asked  many  years  ago  {Gentleman  s  Magazine,  December,  1850), 
*  Who  does  not  wish  to  know  all  that  can  be  known  of  an  author 
who  could  write  such  stanzas  as  the  following  ?  ' — 

'  See  where  the  babes  of  memorie  are  laid 
Under  the  shadow  of  Apollos  tree, 
That  pleit  their  garlands  fresh,  and  well  apaid. 
And  breath  foorth  lines  of  daintie  poecie  : 

Ah  world  farewell,  the  sight  hereof  dooth  tell, 
That  true  content  dooth  in  the  desert  dwell. 
•  •  •  .  • 

Sweete  solitarie  life,  thou  true  repose, 
Wherein  the  wise  contemplate  heaven  aright, 


262  Notes 

Cbomas  ^obge. 

PAGE 

In  thee  no  dread  of  warre  or  worldly  foes, 
In  thee  no  pompe  seduceth  mortall  sight, 

In  thee  no  wanton  eares  to  win  with  words, 
Nor  lurking  toyes,  which  Citie  life  affoords. 

At  peepe  of  day,  when  in  her  crimson  pride, 
The  Morne  bespreds  with  roses  all  the  waie 
Where  Phcebus  coach  with  radiant  course  must  glide, 
The  Hermit  bends  his  humble  knees  to  pray  : 

Blessing  that  God,  whose  bountie  did  bestow 
Such  beauties  on  the  earthly  things  below.' ' 


(itorgc  Cbapmait. 

21 — XL.  The  first  in  a  corona,  or  crown,  of  ten  sonnets,  entitled  A 
Coronet  for  his  Mistresse  Philosophie,  published  with  Ovids  Banquet 
of  Sence,  &c.,  1595.  A  selection  from  the  sixteen  sonnets  attached 
to  Chapman's  translation  of  Homer  may  not  be  unacceptable  to  the 
reader  here.  Coleridge,  writing  to  Wordsworth  in  1807  with  a  copy 
of  the  volume,  in  allusion  to  the  Dedication  to  Prince  Henry  and 
these  Homer  sonnets  (though  erroneously  speaking  of  the  latter  as 
prefixed  to  the  Odyssey  instead  of  affixed  to  the  Iliad),  says  :  '  Chap- 
man, in  his  moral  heroic  verse  .  .  .  stands  above  Ben  Jonson  ; 
there  is  more  dignity,  more  lustre,  and  equal  strength  ;  but  not  mid- 
way quite  between  him  and  the  sonnets  of  Milton.  I  do  not  know 
whether  I  give  him  the  higher  praise,  in  that  he  reminds  me  of 
Ben  Jonson  with  a  sense  of  his  superior  excellence,  or  that  he 
brings  Milton  to  memory  notwithstanding  his  inferiority.  His  moral 
poems  are  not  quite  out  of  books  like  Jonson's,  nor  yet  do  the  sen- 
timents so  wholly  grow  up  out  of  his  own  natural  habit  and  grandeur 
of  thought,  as  in  Milton.  The  sentiments  have  been  attracted  to 
him  by  a  natural  affinity  of  his  intellect,  and  so  combined  ; — ^but 
Jonson  has  taken  them  by  individual  and  successive  acts  of  choice.' 
{Literary  Remains,  1836,  i,  261).  Of  these  sonnets  specially 
marked  by  Coleridge  (ist,  nth,  and  15th)  the  following  are  the  two 
last  {The  Iliads  of  Homer,  Prince  of  Poets  :  &c.  [161 1]  fol.) : — 


1  From  a  poem  In  Commendation  of  a  Solitarie  Life  (Scillaes  Mftamorphosis,  &c., 
1589).  L.  I  babes  o/metnorie.  So  Milton  On  Shakespear.    lOjo  (Poems,  1645,  p.  27)  : 
'  Dear  son  of  memory,  great  heir  of  Fame  ; ' 

anticipated   by  Alexander  Gardyne    in   his   Theatre  of  Scottish  Worthies,  1626  ? 

(Hunterian  Club  edn.,  1878,  p.  8) : 

'  The  heire  of  Honor  &  the  chyld  of  Fame.' 


Notes  263 


TO  THE  HAPPY  STARKE,  DISCOVERED  /TV  OUR 

SYDNEIAN    ASTERISME,    COMFORT   OF   LEARNING,    SPHERE 
OF   ALL  THE   VERTHES,  THE   LADY    VVROTHE. 

When  all  our  other  Starres  set  in  their  skies 

To  Vertue,  and  all  honor  of  her  kind, 

That  you,  rare  Lady,  should  so  clearcly  rise, 

Makes  all  the  vertuous  glorifie  your  mind. 

And  let  true  Reason  and  Religion  trie 

If  it  be  Fancie,  not  judiciall  Right, 

In  you  t'  oppose  the  times  Apostasie, 

To  take  the  soules  part,  and  her  saving  Light, 

While  others  blinde  and  burie  both  in  Sense, 

When  tis  the  onely  end  for  which  all  live. 

And  could  those  soules  in  whom  it  dies  dispense 

As  much  with  their  Religion,  they  would  give 

That  as  small  grace.  Then  shun  their  course,  faire  Starre, 

And  still  keepe  your  way  pure  and  circular. ' 

TO  THE  EIGHT  NOBLE  AND  HEROICALL, 

MY   SINGULAR   GOOD   LORD,   THE   LORD   OF   WALDEN,    ETC. 

Nor  let  the  vulgar  sway  Opinion  beares, 

Rare  Lord,  that  Poesies  favor  shewes  men  vaine, 

Ranke  you  amongst  her  sterne  disfavourers  ; 

She  all  things  worthy  favour  dotlvmaintaine. 

Vertue  in  all  tilings  else  at  best  she  betters. 

Honour  she  heightens,  and  gives  Life  in  Death, 

She  is  the  ornament  and  soule  of  letters, 

The  worlds  deceipt  before  her  vanisheth  ; 

Simple  she  is  as  Doves,  like  Serpents  wise, 

Sharp,  grave,  and  sacred  ;  nought  but  things  divine, 

'  The  Lady  l\Iary  Wrothe  was  the  daughter  of  Robert  Sidney,  Earl  of  Leicester, 
and  wife  of  Sir  Robert  Wrothe.  Her  Urania  (1621)  is  a  prose  romance,  written  in 
imitation  of  her  uncle  Sir  P.  Sidney's  y^nrrt^/rt,  interspersed  with  regular  sonnets 
and  other  verses,  specimens  of  which  may  be  seen  in  Sir  E.  Brydges'  Restituta,  ii, 
1S15,  260-275.  Jt  was  not  an  ungraceful  compliment  to  this  lady  on  the  part  of  Ben 
Jonson,  who  hated  rime  in  general — 

•  Rime  the  rack  of  finest  wits, 
That  e.\presseth  but  by  fits 

True  Conceipt' — 

and,  Drummond  tells  us, '  cursed  Petrarch  for  redacting  verses  into  sonnets,'  to  make  so 
unwonted  a  surrender  ofhis  prejudice  when  addressing  her  ( Und  eriuood  s ,  ed.  1640)  : — 

TO  THE  NOBLE  LADY,    THE  LADY  MART   WROTH. 

I  that  have  beene  a  lover,  and  could  shew  it, 

Though  not  in  these,  in  rithmes  not  wholly  dumbe, 

Since  I  exscribe  your  Sonnets,  am  become 

A  better  lover,  and  much  better  Poet. 

Nor  is  my  Muse  or  I  asham'd  to  owe  it. 

To  those  true  numerous  Graces,  whereof  some 

But  charme  the  Senses,  others  over-come 

Both  braines  and  hearts,  and  mine  now  best  doe  know  it  : 

For  in  your  verse  all  Cupids  Armorie, 

His  flames,  his  shafts,  his  Quiver,  and  his  Bow, 

His  very  eyes  are  yours  to  overthrow. 

But  then  his  Mothers  sweets  you  so  apply. 

Her  joyes,  her  smiles,  her  loves,  as  readers  take 

For  Venus  Ceston  every  line  you  make. 

Ben  Johnson. 


264  Notes 

#£orgc  Cljirpmrnt. 

PAGE 

And  things  divining,  fit  her  faculties, 
Accepting  her  as  she  is  genuine. 
If  she  be  vaine  then,  all  things  else  are  vile ; 
If  virtuous,  still  be  Patrone  of  her  stile.' 

21 — XLi.  The  most  perfect  sympathy  with  the  time  fails  to  explain,  or 
at  all  events  to  justify,  the  extraordinary  measure  of  favour  with 
which  Watson  was  regarded  by  his  contemporaries.  With  every  wish 
to  appreciate  a  writer  known  and  esteemed  by  such  men  as  Sidney, 
Lyly,  and  Spenser,  and  mourned,  as  is  supposed,  by  the  last-named 
in  Colin  Clouts  come  home  againe  as  the  '  floure  of  shepheards  pride 

forlorne ' — 

*  the  noblest  swaine 
That  ever  piped  in  an  oaten  quill ' — 

I  have  been  unable  to  gather,  either  from  his  lachrymary  or  his 
'  passionate '  collection,  more  than  one  example  suited  to  the  pre- 
sent purpose.  Even  that  one  is  accepted  less  for  its  intrinsic  than 
its  representative  value.  It  belongs  to  The  Tears  of  Fancie,  or  Love 
Disdained,  a  series  of  sixty  sonnets  published  in  1593,  of  which  a 
single  perusal  will  demonstrate  that  it  is  not  always  without  reason 
that  Fortune  neglects  her  favourites.  The  perusal  should  also  have 
the  effect  of  moderating  any  feeling  of  disappointment  which  other- 
wise might  have  arisen  from  the  fact  that  by  some  accident  of  the 
press  eight  of  these  sixty  sonnets  are  wanting  in  the  only  copy  at 
present  known  ;  and  that  the  '  sonnets,'  so-called,  composing  Wat- 
son's earlier  and  larger  work,  the  EKarujiiTtaQia,  or  Passionate  Cen- 
turie  of  Love,  1582,  are  constructed  on  a  principle  which  precludes 
themf  rom  consideration  as  sonnets  at  all.  But  the  estimate  put  upon 
this  forgotten  poet  by  certain  moderns  is  still  more  unaccountable. 
George  Steevens  pronounced  him  '  a  more  elegant  sonneteer  than 
Shakspeare; '  and  Professor  Henry  Morley,  at  whose  suggestion  Mr. 
Arber  in  his  admirable  reprint  (1870)  has  placed  within  every  stu- 
dent's reach  an  author  hitherto  inaccessible,  claims  for  him  the  merit 
of  being  the  sweetest  of  the  purely  amatory  poets  of  Elizabeth's 
reign  ;  while  Mr.  Arber  ranks  him  next  to  Spenser  :  '  that  is,'  he 
says,  '  before  Sidney  as  a  Poet.'  The  most  unfeigned  gratitude  for 
all  Mr.  Arber's  services  to  literature  cannot  prevent  one  from  smiling 
at  such  a  judgment,  or  marvelling  at  the  perverse  enthusiasm  which 

>  The  Lord  of  IValden  =  Theophilus  Howard,  Lord  Howard  of  Walden. 


Notes  265 

in  the  nineteenth  century  seeks  to  reinstate  a  writer  whose  whole 
known  'effects,'  fascinating  as  they  may  have  been  to  '  ingenious 
men  in  the  latter  end  of  Q.  Elizabeth,'  as  Wood  puis  it,  do  not 
yield  a  dozen  verses  possessing  one  jot  of  human  interest  ;  unless 
perhaps  we  except  the  really  beautiful  Eglogue  upon  the  Death  of 
Sir  Francis  Walsingham  (1590),  which  has  an  occasional  remote 
resemblance  to  Milton's  Lycidas.  That  Watson  was  sometimes 
dainty  and  graceful  as  a  translator,  however,  the  following  example 
of  his  eighteen-lined  stanzas  will  show.  It  is  the  53rd  of  the 
'UxarojiiTtaOia,  the  theme  being  borrowed,  the  old  annotator  tells 
us,  from  the  Greek  of  Theocritus,  through  the  Latin  version  of  C. 
Ursinus  Velius,  a  Roman  epigrammatist : 

Where  tender  Love  had  laide  him  downe  to  sleepe, 
A  little  Bee  so  stong  his  fingers  end. 
That  burning  ache  enforced  him  to  weepe 
And  call  for  Phebus  Sonne  to  stand  his  frend  ; 
To  whome  he  cride,  I  muse  so  small  a  thing 
Can  pricke  thus  deepe  with  suche  a  little  Sting. 
Why  so,  sweet  Boy,  quoth  Venus  sitting  by? 
Thy  selfe  is  yong,  tliy  arrowes  are  but  small 
And  yet  thy  shotte  makes  hardest  harts  to  cry? 
To  Phebus  Sunne  she  turned  therewithall. 

And  prayde  him  shew  his  skill  to  cure  the  sore, 
Whose  like  her  Boy  had  neuer  felt  before. 
Then  he  with  Herbes  recured  soone  the  wound, 
Which  being  done,  he  threw  the  Herbes  away, 
Whose  force,  through  touching  Love,  in  selfe  same  ground, 
By  haplesse  hap  did  breede  my  hartes  decay  : 

f'or  there  they  fell,  where  long  my  hart  had  li'ne 
To  waite  for  Love,  and  what  he  should  assigne.* 

Mr.  Minto  quotes  two  of  Watson's  sonnets  (19th  and  20th  of  The  Tears 
of  Fancie)  as  deriving  a  certain  interest  from  their  having  apparently 
been  imitated  in  Shakspeare's  46th  and  47th. 


Ilobcrt  incite. 

PAGE 

22 — XLII.     From  Francescos  Fortunes  :  or  the  Second  Part  of  Greenes 
Never  too  late,  &c.,  1590. 

siege=%&2X  ;  /r^j/=  prepared,  ready — as  in  his  Alphonsus,  King  of 
Arragon,  indicated  by  Dyce  (Greene's  Works,  1831,  ii,  45): 

'  Belinus  comes,  in  glittering  armour  clad. 
All  ready  prest  for  to  revenge  the  wrong 
W^hich,  not  long  since,  you  ofler'd  unto  him.' 


•  Phebus  Sonne  =  ^Esculapius. 


266  Notes 

llobcrt  Greene. 

sorry  =  full  of  sorrow,  as  it  was  then — cf.  George  Herbert's  Sinnes 
Rotmd  {N\.^\r^&  ed.,  p.  157): 

'  Sorrie  I  am,  my  God,  sorrie  I  am.' 

subscribes  =  submits — as  in  Shakspeare's  loyth  Sonnet  (xciv,  10). 
XLiii.     First  printed  in  Greenes  Groatsworth  of  IVitte :  bought 

■with  a  million  of  Repentaiue,  &c.,  1592.     Given  here  from  the 

corrected  quarto  of  1637. 
These  prose  romances  of  Greene's,  which  it  is  well  known  are  largely- 
autobiographical,  our  two  sonnets  in  particular  being  uttered  truly  '  from 
the  depths,'  suggest  here  the  famous  pamphlet  in  which  his  former 
friend,  Gabriel  Harvey,  narrates  the  sad  story  of  the  poor  dramatist's  last 
hours,  and  in  which  occur  '  certaine  Sonnets '  of  an  exceptional  character. 
This  was  Fonre  Letters,  and  certaine  Sonnets  :  especially  touching  Robert 
Greene,  and  other  parties  by  him  abused :  &c.,  published  in  1592,  imme- 
diately after  Greene's  death.  The  sonnets,  of  which  the  2nd  and  5th 
may  be  quoted  here,  occupy  the  last  portion  of  the  volume,  under  the 
general  title  of  Greenes  Memoriall. 

HIS  MISFORTUN,  IN  BEING  SPITEFULLY  IN  JUKI  ED 

BY   SOJIE,    WHOM   HE    PARTIALLY   COMMENDED. 

Unlucky  I,  "unhappiest  on  Earth, 

That  fondly  doting  upon  dainty  witts. 

And  deepely  ravish'd  with  their  luring  fitts, 

Of  gentle  favours  find  so  hard  a  Dearth  ! 

Is  it  my  Fate,  or  Fault,  that  such  fine  men 

Should  their  Commender  so  unkindly  bite. 

That  looves  to  loove,  in  spite  of  rankest  Spite, 

And  hates  to  hate,  with  Hart,  or  Tongue,  or  Pen? 

Sweet  Writers,  as  yee  covet  to  be  sweet. 

Nor  me,  nor  other,  nor  your  selves  abuse  ; 

Humanity  doth  courteously  peruse 

Each  act  of  frend,  or  foe,  with  favour  meet. 

Foul  Divel,  and  fouler  Malice,  cease  to  rave  : 

For  every  fault  I  twenty  pardons  crave. 

Gabriel  Harvey. 

THE  LEARNED  SHOULD  LOVINGLY  AFFECT  THE  LEARNED. 

I  am  not  to  instruct  where  I  may  learne, 

But  where  I  may  persuasively  exhort ; 

Nor  over-dissolute,  nor  over-sterne, 

A  courteous  Honesty  I  would  extort. 

Good  loathes  to  damage  or  upbraid  the  good  ; 

Gentle  how  loovely  to  the  gentle  wight  ! 

Who  seeith  not  how  every  blooming  budd 

Smileth  on  every  flower  fairely  dyght. 

And  biddeth  fowle  illfavouredness  God-night? 

Would  Alciats  Embleme,  or  sum  scarlet  whood. 


Notes  267 

Could  teach  the  Pregnant  sonnes  of  shiny  Light 
To  interbrace  each  other  with  delight ! 
Fine  Mercury  conducts  a  dainty  band 
Of  Charites  and  Muses,  hand  in  hand.' 

Gabriel  Harvey, 

Siimucl   ^auicl. 

'This  poet's  well-merited  epithet,' says  Coleridge,  '  is  that  of  the 
"  well-languaged  Daniel;  "  '•  but,  likewise,  and  by  the  consent  of  his  con- 
temporaries, no  less  than  all  succeeding  critics,  the  "  prosaic  Daniel." 
Yet  those  who  thus  designate  this  wise  and  amiable  writer,  from  the  fre- 
quent incorrespondency  of  his  diction  with  his  metre,  in  the  majority  of 
his  compositions,  not  only  deem  them  valuable  and  interesting  on  other 
accounts,  but  willingly  admit  that  there  are  to  be  found  throughout  his 
poems,  and  especially  in  his  Epistles  and  in  his  Hymens  Triumph,  many 
and  exquisite  specimens  of  that  style,  which,  as  the  neutral  ground  of 
prose  and  verse,  is  common  to  both.'  ^  Knowing  his  solid  worth,  Cole- 
ridge missed  few  opportunities  of  commending  this  admirable  poet,  whom 
Southey  also  held  in  equal  respect  and  affection,  quoting  him  often,  and 
that  usually  with  a  special  word  of  praise  :  in  The  Doctor,  for  example, 
where  on  one  occasion  (p.  121,  ed.  1848)  he  calls  him  '  one  of  the  sweetest 
and  tenderest  of  English  poets,'  and  on  another  '  the  tenderest  of  all 
tender  poets,'  the  incredulous  reader  being  referred  to  '  Leigh  Hunt, 
or  Wordsworth,  or  Charles  Lamb,'  for  confirmation  ;  while  in  the  Speci- 
mens{i82^)  there  occurs  this  succinct  estimate  of  poet  and  man  :  '  Daniel 
frequently  writes  below  his  subject  and  his  strength  ;  but  always  in  a 
strain  of  tender  feeling,  and  in  language  as  easy  and  natural  as  it  is  pure. 
For  his  diction  alone  he  would  deserve  to  be  studied  by  all  students  or 
lovers  of  poetry,  even  if  his  works  did  not  abound  with  passages  of  sin- 
gular beauty.  Thoughtful,  grateful,  right-minded,  and  gentle-hearted, 
there  is  no  poet,  in  any  language,  of  whom  it  may  be  inferred  with 
more  certainty,  from  his  writings,  that  he  was  an  amiable,  and  wise,  and 
good  man.'    Next  to  his  stainless  moral  purity,''  perhaps  what  most  dis- 

1  L.  3  dissolztte  —  weak,  lax — the  original  sense.  Alciats  Embleine.  In  allusion  to 
one  of  the  'Concordia'  emblems  in  Andrea  Alciati's  once-popular  book,  imitated 
among  ourselves  by  such  writers  as  Francis  Quarles,  Wither,  and  Bunyan.  Prof. 
Henry  IMorley  gives  a  wood-cut  and  description  of  one  of  Alciati's  emblems  in  his 
Shorter  Etiglish  Poe»!s.     L.  10  scarlet  wkood  =  monk,  ecclesiastic. 

2  William  Browne  {^Brit.  Past.,  1625,  Bk.  ii.  Song  2,  p.  49). 

'  Biographia  Literaria,  2nd  ed.  1S47,  ii,  83.  See  also  two  letters  of  Coleridge  to 
Charles  Lamb,  written  on  the  fly-leaf  of  Lamb's  copy  of  Daniel,  and  printed  in  the  Life 
of  Daniel  in  yohnsons  Lives  0/ the  British  Poets,  Completed  by  William  Hazlitt, 
4  vols.     1854. 

*  Richard  Barnfield,  a  contemporary,  in  his  Retnembrance  of  Some  English  Poets, 
1598,  discriminates  Daniel's  'sweet-chast  verse  '  as  his  special  praise  ;  and  Winstanley 
(Lives  of  the  Most  Famous  English  Poets  ,t(>Z-j  ,  p.  109'),  quoting  Fuller,  describes  him 
quaintly  as  '  one  of  the  Darlings  of  the  Muses,  a  most  excellent  poet,  whose  Wings  of 


268  Notes 

Samuel  panirl. 
tinguishes  Daniel  from  the  majority  of  his  contemporaries — the '  sage  and 
serious  '  Daniel,  as  one  might  call  him,  appropriating  Milton's  character 
of  Spenser — is  the  singular  niodernness  of  his  style,  his  love  of  our  lan- 
guage and  literature  for  their  own  sakes,  and  the  almost  Wordsworthian 
nobleness  of  spirit  in  which  he  followed  the  Poet's  calling.  Witness 
these  memorable  words  in  his  Musophilus,  which  Professor  Lowell  has 
recently  declared  to  be  '  the  best  poem  of  its  kind  in  the  language ' 
{Among  My  Books,  2nd  Series,  Boston,  1876,  p.  138)  : 

'  Be  it  that  my  unseasonable  Song 

Come  out  of  time,  that  fault  is  in  the  Time, 
And  I  must  not  doe  Vertue  so  much  wrong, 
As  love  her  aught  the  worse  for  others  crime  : 

•  ■  •  •  •  • 

4 

And  for  my  part,  if  onely  one  allow 

The  care  my  labouring  spirits  take  in  this, 
He  is  to  me  a  Theater  large  enow. 
And  his  applause  onely  sufficient  is  : 
All  my  respect  is  bent  but  to  his  brow, 
That  is  my  All,  and  all  I  am,  is  his. 

And  if  some  worthy  spirits  be  pleased  too. 

It  shall  more  comfort  breede,  but  not  more  will. 
But  what  if  none  ?     It  cannot  yet  undoo 
The  love  I  beare  unto  this  holy  skill : 
This  is  the  thing  that  I  was  borne  to  doo, 
This  is  my  Scene,  this  part  must  I  fulfill.' 

And  the  prescient  passage  further  on  in  which  he  foretells  the  destinies 
awaiting  his  beloved  English  tongue.  Professor  Lowell  acknowledges 
the  '  kindly  prophetic  word  for  us  Occidentals.' 

'  And  who,  in  time,  knowes  whither  we  may  vent 

The  treasure  of  our  tongue,  to  what  strange  shores 
This  gaine  of  our  best  glory  shall  be  sent, 
T'  enrich  unknowing  Nations  with  our  stores? 
What  worlds  in  th'  yet  unformed  Occident 
May  come  refin'd  with  th'  accents  that  are  ours  ? 

Or,  who  can  tell  for  what  great  worke  in  hand 
The  greatnesse  of  our  stile  is  now  ordain'd  ? 
What  powrs  it  shall  bring  in,  what  spirits  command, 
What  thoughts  let  out,  what  humours  keepe  restrain'd. 
What  mischiefe  it  may  powrefully  withstand, 
And  what  faire  ends  may  thereby  be  attain'd.' 

It  is  matter  for  regret  that  so  little  of  the  work  of  his  hand  appears  in 

Fancy  displayed  the  Flags  of  highest  Invention  :  Carrying  in  his  Christian  and  Sir- 
name  the  Names  of  two  holy  Prophets  ;  which,  as  they  were  Monitors  to  him,  for 
avoyding  Scurrility,  so  he  qualified  his  Raptures  to  such  a  strain,  as  therein  he  ab- 
horred all  Debauchery  and  Prophaness.' 


Notes  269 

these  pages  ;  but  the  truth  is  that  the  deplorable  misconceptions  re- 
specting the  nature  and  special  function  of  the  sonnet,  which  Daniel 
shared  in  common  with  his  contemporaries — Shakespeare  (always  ex- 
ceptional) excepted — cramped  and  perverted  his  natural  powers  as 
often  he  essayed  this  form,  leaving  his  achievements  in  it  but  sorry 
witnesses  to  his  great  qualities.  One  of  the  examples  chosen,  how- 
ever— that  on  page  24 — cannot  but  be  regarded  as  entirely  worthy  of 
his  or  any  genius,  and  abundantly  justifies  the  eulogy  of  a  critic  in 
The  Quarterly  Revietu  (Art.  '  The  Sonnet,'  January,  1873,  P-  IQS).  that 
for  '  mellifluous  tenderness  and  pensive  grace  of  expression '  it  '  miglit 
rank  amongst  the  first  in  the  language.' 

PAGE 

23 — XLIV,  10.  thy  :  so  all  eds.  except  1623,  which  reads  '  the ',  pos- 
sibly intended  rather  for  the  '  thy  '  of  1.  9.  The  two  sonnets  imme- 
diately succeeding  this  in  Delia  may  find  a  place  here.  They  should 
be  compared  with  the  58th  and  5gth  of  Barnabe  Barnes's  Partheno- 
philand  Parthenophe,  1593  (ed.  Grosart,  1875,  pp.  39-4o)- 

(37) 
But  love  whilst  that  thou  maist  be  lov'd  againe, 
Now  whilst  thy  May  hath  fild  thy  lap  with  flowres, 
Now  whilst  thy  beauty  beares  without  a  staine  ; 
Now  use  the  Sommer  smiles,  ere  Winter  lowers. 
And  whilst  thou  spreadst  unto  the  rising  sunne 
The  fairest  flowre  that  ever  saw  the  light, 
Now  joy  thy  time  before  thy  sweet  be  done, 
And  (Delia)  thinke  thy  morning  must  have  night, 
And  that  thy  brightnes  sets  at  length  to  West, 
When  thou  wilt  close  up  that  which  now  thou  show'st, 
And  thinke  the  same  becomes  thy  fading  best, 
Which  then  shall  most  invaile  and  shadow  most. 
Men  do  not  wey  the  stalke  for  that  it  was, 
When  once  they  find  her  flowre  her  glory  pas. 

(3S) 
When  men  shall  find  thy  flower,  thy  glory  passe, 
And  thou  with  carefull  brow  sitting  alone. 
Received  hast  this  message  from  thy  glasse. 
That  tells  the  truth,  and  sayes  that  all  is  gone ; 
Fresh  shalt  thou  see  in  me  the  wounds  thou  madst, 
Though  spent  thy  flame,  in  me  the  heat  remaining ; 
1  that  have  lov'd  thee  thus  before  thou  fadst. 
My  faith  shall  waxe,  when  thou  art  in  thy  waining. 
The  world  shall  finde  this  myracle  in  me. 
That  fire  can  burne  when  all  the  matter's  spent : 
Then  what  my  faith  hath  bene  thy  selfe  shall  see, 
And  that  thou  wast  unkinde,  thou  mayst  repent. 
Thou  maist  repent  that  thou  hast  scornd  my  teares, 
When  winter  snowes  upon  thy  sable  haires. 


2^0  'Notes 

SamutI  gjtitkl. 

XLV,  11-14.  The  3rd  ed.  of  Delia  (i594)  reads: 

'  When  time  hath  made  a  pasport  for  thy  feares, 
Dated  in  age,  the  Kalends  of  our  death. 
But  ah  !  no  more,  this  hath  beene  often  tolde. 
And  women,'  &c. 

24— XLVi.    Care-charmer  Sleep.   Appropriated,  as  Mr.  Collier  pointed 

out  {Biblio.  Acct.  Eng.  Lit.,  1865,  ii,  556),  by  B.  Griffin  in  the  15th 

Sonnet  of  his  Fidessa,  1596— an  appropriation  conceded  by  Dr. 

Grosart,  Griffin's  latest    editor   (1876),   who  however  acquits  his 

author  of  all  the  other  charges  of  plagiarism  which  Mr.  Collier 

brings  against  him  from  Daniel,  Gascoigne,  and  Shakspeare.'     I 

subjoin  Griffin's  sonnet  for  the  reader's  gratification,  though  he 

may  hardly  endorse  Dr.  Grosart's  opinion  that  it  '  more  than  holds 

its  own '  beside  Daniel's  : — 

Care-charmer  Sleepe,  sweet  ease  in  restles  miserie, 

The  captives  libertie,  and  his  freedomes  song  ; 

Balm  of  the  brused  heart,  mans  chiefe  felicitie. 

Brother  of  quiet  death,  when  life  is  too  too  long. 

A  Comedie  it  is,  and  now  an  Historic — • 

What  is  not  sleepe  unto  the  feeble  minde  ? 

It  easeth  him  t4iat  toyles,  and  him  that's  sorrie, 

It  makes  the  deaffe  to  heare,  to  see  the  blinde. 

Ungentle  sleepe,  thou  helpest  all  but  me, 

For  when  I  sleepe  my  sole  is  vexed  most ; 

It  is  Fidessa  that  doth  master  thee  : 

If  she  approach  (alas)  thy  power  is  lost. 

But  here  she  is  :  see  how  he  runnes  amaine  ; 

I  feare  at  night  he  will  not  come  againe. 

Bartholomew  Griffin. 

A  little  poem  of  ineffable  softness  and  beauty,  sung  to  music  in 
Beaumont  and  Fletcher's  tragedy  of  Valentinian,  may  also  be 
quoted  for  its  points  of  resemblance  (ed.  Dyce,  1844,  v,  297) : 

'  Care-charming  Sleep,  thou  easer  of  all  woes, 
Brother  to  Death,  sweetly  thyself  dispose 
On  this  afflicted  prince  ;  fall,  like  a  cloud. 
In  gentle  showers;  give  nothing  that  is  loud 
Or  painful  to  his  slumbers  ;  easy,  sweet. 
And  as  a  purling  stream,  thou  son  of  Night, 

1  Dr.  Grosart  has  effectually  vindicated  Griffin's  authorship  of  the  sonnet  in  The 
Passionate  Pilgrime  (1599) — an  unauthoritative  miscellany  never  in  any  way  ac- 
knowledged by  Shakspeare — beginning 

'  Venus,  with  Adonis  sitting  by  her.' 
of  which  the  3rd  in  the  Fidessa,  beginning 

'  Venus,  and  yong  Adonis  sitting  by  her,' 
is  a  superior  as  well  as  earlier  version. 


Notes  271 

Pass  by  his  troubled  senses  ;  sing  his  pain, 
Like  hollow  murmuring  wind  or  silver  rain; 
Into  this  prince  gently,  oh,  gently  slide, 
And  kiss  him  into  slumbers  like  a  bride.'  ' 

The  late  Mr.  Corser  notes  {Collectanea  Anglo-Poetica,  Pt.  11,  1861, 
p.  369)  that  Daniel's  sonnet  has  been  made  rather  free  with  by 
Richard  Brathwaite  too,  in  his  poem  A  Grief e  {Time's  Curtaine 
Drawne,  &c.,  162 1) : — 

'  Care  charming  sleepe,  thou  sonne  of  sable  night. 
That  cheares  our  drowping  spirits  with  delight. 
Making  us  forget  care,  as  if  kept  under 
By  some  sweete  spell,  or  some  Lethean  slumber : 
Away  and  leave  me,'  &c. 

and  an  instance  of  the  initial  phrase  occurs  in  Sylvester's  Du  Bartas 
{Fifth  Day  of  First  Week,  p.  46,  fol.  1641) : 

'  And  when  the  honey  of  care-charming  sleep 
Sweetly  begins  through  all  their  veines  to  creep.' 

Brother  to  Death  :  an  immemorial  classical  common-place  of  fre- 
quent recurrence  in  our  elder  as  in  our  later  literature,  of  which  the 
following  selection  of  examples,  in  addition  to  those  from  Grifhn  and 
Beaumont  and  Fletcher  as  above,  may  be  useful  to  the  student : — 
Geo.  Chapman's  Ccesar  and  Pompey  (ed.  Lond.  1873,  iii>  i^^)  • 

'  but  when  death 
(Sleepes  naturall  brother)  comes  ; ' 

John  Webster's  White  Devil  {-p.  40,  ed.  Dyce,  1857: 
'  O  thou  soft  natural  death,  that  art  joint-twin 
To  sweetest  slumber  ; ' 
Drummond  of  Hawthornden  {Poems,  p.  46,  ed.  TumbuU,  1856) : 
'  If  Death  Sleep's  brother  be  ; 

Sir  Tho.  Browne,  in  allusion  to  sleep  {Hydtiotaphia,  §  4)  :  '  Since 
the  brother  of  death  daily  haunts  us  with  dying  mementos  ; '  Tho. 
.  Washbourne  {Poems,  p.  230,  ed.  Grosart,  186S)  : 

'  let  Death  suceed 
His  elder  brother.  Sleep  ; ' 

Hon.  W.  Herbert  (quoted  by  Scott,   Woodstock,  chap,  vi,  motto) : 

'  Sleep  steals  on  us  even  like  his  brother  Death  ; ' 

>  It  maj'  be  noticed  in  passing  that  these  lines  have  been  included,  as  '  never  before 
printed,' in  our  best  edition  of  Donne  (/'oc;«Joy7o//«Z>i7««^,Z>.Z>.,ed.  Grosart,  1872-3, 
ii,  246),  on  theslrength  ofthe  discovery  ofan  inacctirate  transcript  of  them, signed'  Dr. 
Donn,'  in  the  library  of  Trinity  Coll.,  Cambridge  (MS.  B.14.  22).  Nor  is  this  the 
less  curious  from  the  circumstance  that  Daniel's  sonnet  was  itself  once  the  subject  of  a 
similar  mistake  ;  tor  a  draft  of  it  having  been  found  among  the  papers  of  his  friend 
and  correspondent  Drummond  of  Hawthornden,  Phillips  gave  it  a  place  (p.  185)  in 
the  posthumous  edition  ofthe  Scottish  poet  edited  by  him  in  1656.  In  that  case,  how- 
ever, there  was  no  obvious  incongruity  between  the  work  and  the  putative  workman. 


272  Notes 

PAGE 

Shelley  {Queen  Mab,  i) : 

'  How  wonderful  is  Death — 
Death,  and  his  brother  Sleep  ! ' 

Tennyson  {In  Memoriam,  Ixviii)  : 

'  When  in  the  down  I  sink  my  head, 
Sleep,  Death's  twin-brother,  times  my  breath  ; ' 

'Lz.ndor  {Last  Fruit  off  an  Old  Tree,  1853,  p.  402): 

'  That  gentle  Power, 
Gentle  as  Death,  Death's  brother ; ' 

and  R.  S.  Hawker  {Poetical  Works,  1879,  p.  161) : 

'  When  darkness  fills  the  western  sky, 
And  sleep,  the  twin  of  death,  is  nigh, 
What  soothes  the  soul  at  set  of  sun  ? 
The  pleasant  thought  of  duty  done.' 

Cf.  also  Sackville  {Induction,  1563,  xli),  R.  Southwell  {St.  Peter's 
Complaint,  1596?  st.  121,  p.  41,  ed.  Grosart,  1872),  and  Davies  of 
Hereford  {Scourge  of  Folly,  1610-11,  p.  33,  ed.  Grosart,  1876)  ; 
and  see  under  cxiv,  14.  L.  4  care  :  earlier  eds.  '  cares,' 
23-24 — XLIV-XLVI.  From  Delia,  first  published  1592.  The  text  used 
is  that  of  the  collective  quarto,  edited  by  John  Daniel,  the  poet's 
brother  :  The  Whole  Workes  of  Samuel  Daniel  Esquire,  In  Poetrie. 
1623.' 

24-XLVil.  The  37th  Sonnet  of  Idea  (1593) :  Poems.  Newly  cotrected 
by  the  Author,  1608.  In  ed.  of  1619  tmto  (1.  9)  becomes  '  else  to  '. 
This  sonnet,  which  might  have  as  title  the  beautiful  Scotch  saying 
'  The  E'en  brings  a'  hame,'  ^  I  select  chiefly  for  its  magical  realiza- 
tion of  the  feeling  of  evening.  The  spirit  of  the  hour,  with  all  its 
kindliness  and  peace,  was  never  more  perfectly  breathed  into  Eng- 
lish verse.  It  may  be  linked  here  with  one  by  that  other  true 
Arcadian,  the  '  sweet  singer '  of  Bntannia's  PastoralsC  Caelia,'  13  : 
La7isdozvne  MSS.,  Brit.  Mus.,  777,  Art.  1,  fol.  17) : 


1  This  is  the  text  adopted  in  an  elaborate  edition  of  Daniel,  in  4  vols.,  on  which 
Dr.  Grosart,  assisted  by  eminent  collaborators,  has  been  engaged  for  some  years;  and 
it  is  gratifying  to  learn  that  the  work,  a  real  desideratum,  will  now  not  long  be  de- 
ferred. Are  not  the  poet's  own  sanguine  words  being  verified?  {Certaine  Small 
Workes  hereto/ore  divulged,  &c.,  1607  :  To  the  Reader)  :— 

'  I  know  1  shalbe  read  among  the  rest 
So  long  as  men  speake  english,  and  so  long 
As  verse  and  vertue  shalbe  in  request, 
Or  grace  to  honest  industry  belong.' 

2  This  has  been  spritualized  in  a  poem  of  much  beauty  by  the  author  (or  authoress, 
I  believe)  of  an  anonymous  little  volume  of  verse,  entitled  Spring  Songs.  By  a 
West  Highlander,  1865.     (Macmillan). 


Notes  273 

PAGE 

Night,  stcale  not  on  too  fast :  wee  have  not  yet 
Shed  all  our  parting  teares,  nor  paid  the  kisses, 
Which  foure  dayes  absence  made  us  run  in  debt, 
(O,  who  would  absent  be  where  growe  such  blisses?) 
The  Rose,  which  but  this  morning  spred  her  leaves, 
Kist  not  her  neighbour  flower  more  chast  then  wee  ; 
Nor  are  the  timelye  Eares  bound  up  in  sheaves 
More  strict  then  in  our  Amies  we  twisted  be  ; 
O  who  would  part  us  then,  and  disunite 
Twoo  harmeles  soules,  so  innocent  and  true, 
That  were  all  honest  Love  forgotten  quite, 
By  our  Example  men  might  Learne  Anew. 
Night  severs  us,  but  pardon  her  she  maye. 
And  will  once  make  us  happy er  then  the  daye. 

William  Browne, 

25 — XLViil.  The  6ist, /i5/^.  Poems.  With  Sondry  Peeces  inserted  never 
before  Imprinted,  i6ig.  '  From  Anacreon  down  to  Moore,'  says 
Henry  Reed,  speaking  of  this  sonnet  {Lectures  on  the  Btitish  Poets, 
VII  :  i,  241,  Philadelphia,  1857),  '  I  know  of  no  lines  on  the  old 
subject  of  lovers'  quarrels,  distinguished  for  equal  tenderness  of 
sentiment  and  richness  of  fancy.  Especially  may  be  observed  the 
exquisite  gracefulness  in  the  transition  from  the  familiar  tone  in 
the  first  part  of  the  sonnet  to  the  deeper  feeling  and  the  higher 
strain  of  imagination  at  the  close.' 
24-25 — XLVii-XLViii.  As  in  the  case  of  Samuel  Daniel,  with  whom, 
somehow,  he  is  commonly  associated,  only  a  scant  selection  has 
been  made  from  Michael  Drayton—*'  that  Panegyrist  of  my  native 
Earth  ;  who  has  gone  over  her  soil  (in  his  Polyolbioii)  with  the 
fidelity  of  a  herald,  and  the  painful  love  of  a  son  ;  who  has  not  left 
a  rivulet  (so  narrow  that  it  may  be  stept  over)  without  honourable 
mention  ;  and  has  animated  Hills  and  Streams  with  life  and  passion 
above  the  dreams  of  old  mythology  ' ' — the  two  examples  given 
being  perhaps  as  many  out  of  the  '  Sixtie  Three  Sonnets '  com- 
posing his  Idea  as  may  with  perfect  safety  be  transplanted  hither. 
Not  that  many  of  the  others  have  not  their  portion  of  rememberable 
beauty,  or  that  any  of  them  is  undeserving  of  study.  Take  the  two 
following,  for  example,  so  perfect  in  their  verbal  mechanism  : — 

(  23  ) 
Love,  banish'd  Heav'n,  in  Earth  was  held  in  scome, 
Wand'ring  abroad  in  need  and  Beggerie  ; 
And  wanting  Friends,  though  of  a  Goddesse  borne, 
Yet  crav'd  the  Almes  of  such  as  passed  by  : 
I,  like  a  Man,  devout  and  charitable, 
Clothed  the  Naked,  lodg'd  this  wand'ring  Ghest, 

1  Charles  Lamb  {Dramatic  Specimens,  i,  49,  ed.  1849). 


274  Notes 

With  Sighes  and  Teares  still  furnishing  his  Table, 

With  what  might  make  the  Miserable  blest. 

But  this  ungratefull,  for  my  good  desert, 

Intic'd  my  Thoughts,  against  me  to  conspire. 

Who  gave  consent  to  steale  away  my  Heart, 

And  set  my  Brest,  his  Lodging,  on  a  fire. 

Well,  well,  my  Friends,  when  Beggers  grow  thus  bold, 

No  marvell  then  though  Charitie  grow  cold. 

(47) 
In  pride  of  Wit,  when  high  desire  of  Fame 
Gave  Life  and  Courage  to  my  lab'ring  Pen, 
And  first  the  sound  and  vertue  of  my  Name 
Wonne  grace  and  credite  in  the  Fares  of  Men  ; 
With  those  the  thronged  Theaters  that  presse, 
I  in  the  Circuit  for  the  Lawrell  strove. 
Where  the  full  Prayse  I  freely  must  confesse. 
In  heat  of  Bloud,  a  modest  Mind  might  move  : 
With  Showts  and  Claps  at  ev'ry  little  pawse, 
When  the  proud  Round  on  ev'ry  side  hath  rung, 
Sadly  I  sit,  unmov'd  with  the  Applause, 
As  though  to  me  it  nothing  did  belong  : 
No  publique  Glorie  vainely  I  pursue — 
All  that  I  seeke,  is  to  eternize  you. 

And  the  beautiful  53rd  too,  which  contains  some  of  Drayton's  pic- 
turesque and  luscious  epithets,  and  has  the  special  interest  of 
being  a  full-hearted  tribute  in  sonnet-form  to  that  native  stream 
which  he  loved  more  than  all  those  he  was  afterwards  to  celebrate, 
and  which  had  doubtless  been  to  him  what  the  Derwent  was  to  be 
two  centuries  later  to  Wordsworth,  who  sings  how 

'  One,  the  fairest  of  all  rivers,  loved 
To  blend  his  murmurs,  with  my  nurse's  song, 
And  from  his  alder  shades  and  rocky  falls, 
And  from  his  fords  and  shallows,  sent  a  voice 
That  flowed  along  my  dreams.'  ^ 

By  help  of  the  little  poem  moreover  we  shall  be  able  to  revisit  in 

imagination  the  haunt  of  that  melancholy  one  whom  Amiens  and 

his  companion  overheard  moralizing 

'  as  he  lay  along 
Under  an  oak  whose  antique  root  peeps  out 
Upon  the  brook  that  brawls  along  this  wood.'^ 

In  the  edition  used,  that  of  1619,  it  is  entitled  in  the  margin 
Another  to  the  River  Ankor,  a  previous  sonnet,  the  32nd,  having 
been  addressed  to  the  same  stream  : — 

'   The  Prelude.  Book  i. 
*  As  You  Like  It,  ii,  i,  30. 


Notes  275 

Cleere  Ankor,  on  whose  silver-sanded  shore 

My  Soule-shrin'd  Saint,  my  faire  Idea  lies, 

O  blessed  Brooke,  whose  milke-white  Swans  adore 

Thy  Cristall  streame  refined  by  her  Eyes, 

Where  sweet  Myrrh-breathing  Zephire  in  the  Spring 

Gently  distills  his  Nectar-dropping  showres. 

Where  Niglitingales  in  Arden  sit  and  sing. 

Amongst  the  daintie  Dew-impearled  flowres  ; 

Say  thus  faire  Brooke,  when  thou  shalt  see  thy  Queene, 

Loe,  heere  thy  Shepheard  spent  his  wandring  yeeres  ; 

And  in  these  Shades,  deare  Nymph,  he  oft  hath  beene, 

And  heere  to  Thee  he  sacrific'd  his  Teares  : 

Faire  Arden,  thou  my  Tempe  art  alone. 

And  thou,  sweet  Ankor,  art  my  Helicon. 

None  of  these,  not  to  mention  the  two  masterpieces  in  the  text,  can  have 
been  remembered  by  Mrs.  Jameson  when  she  took  it  upon  herself  to 
say  that  Drayton's  sonnets  '  have  neither  poetry,  nor  passion,  nor  even 
elegance.' ' 

|0slnra  Sjilbcstcr. 

PAGE 

25 — XLIX.  From  T>z.visoviS  Poetical  Raps ody,  1602,  and  attributed  to 
Sylvester  from  the  signature  /.  S.  affixed  to  it.  Sir  Egerton  Brydges 
in  his  edition  of  the  Rhapsody,  1814-17,  followed  by  Sir  Harris 
Nicolas  in  his,  1826,  makes  the  misleading  statement  that  the  signa- 
ture was  withdrawn  in  the  fourth  edition  of  1621.  The  explanation 
is  not  far  to  seek.  In  the  first  three  editions  this  sonnet  and  another, 
beginning  '  The  Poets  fayne  that  when  the  world  beganne,'  each 
bearing  the  signature  /.  S.,  are  separated  by  a  couple  of  anonymous 
madrigals  (one  of  them  the  well-known  '  My  Love  in  her  Attyre 
doth  shew  her  witt '),  while  in  the  fourth  edition,  in  which  the  con- 
tents underwent  an  entire  re-arrangement  and  classification,  the  two 
sonnets  are  simply  brought  together,  and  the  initials  in  question 
placed  at  the  end  of  the  second  sonnet  so  as  \o  sei-ve  for  both.  It 
may  be  mentioned,  however,  that  neither  of  these  sonnets  was 
included  in  the  collected  Sylvester  folio  of  1641,  from  which  the 
three  following  additional  specimens  are  extracted.  The  two  first 
belong  to  that  section  of  the  volume  to  which  the  old  editor  (John 
Vicars  ?)  has  prefixed  a  title  whereon  the  '  fantastick  eye  '  of  the 
dead  poet  himself  must  look  with  pleasure  : — Fosthumi.  Or  Syl- 
vesters Remains  :  containing  Divers  Sonnets,  Epistles,  Elegies,  Epi- 
taphs, Epigrams,  and  other  Delight  full  Devises,  Revised  out  of  the 
Ashes  of  that  Silvej--  Tongiied  Translatour  and  Divine  Poet-Laureat, 
Master  Josiiah  Sylvester,  N'ever,   Till  Now,  Imprinted. 

'  Romance  of  Biography :  or  Memoirs  0/ Women  Loved  and  Celebrated  by 
Poets,  3rd  ed.,  1837,  i,  263. 


276  Notes 

(16) 

They  say  that  shadowes  of  deceased  ghosts 
Doe  haunt  the  houses  and  the  graves  about, 
Of  such  whose  lives-lamp  went  untimely  out, 
Delighting  still  in  their  forsaken  hostes  : 
So,  in  the  place  where  cruell  love  doth  shoote 
The  fatall  shaft  that  slue  my  loves  delight, 
I  stalke  and  walke  and  wander  day  and  night, 
Even  like  a  ghost  with  unperceived  foote. 
But  those  light  ghosts  are  happier  far  then  I, 
For,  at  their  pleasure,  they  can  come  and  goe 
Unto  the  place  that  hides  their  treasure,  so. 
And  see  the  same  with  their  fantastick  eye  ; 
Where  I  (alas)  dare  not  approach  the  cruell 
Proud  Monument  that  doth  inclose  my  Jewell. 

(20) 

Thrice  tosse  these  oaken  ashes  in  the  aire, 

And  thrice  three  times  tie-up  this  true  Loves  knot  ; 

Thrice  sit  thee  downe  in  this  enchanted  chaire, 

And  murmure  soft,  slice  will  or  shee  will  not. 

Goe  burn  these  poys'ned  weeds  in  that  blew  fire. 

This  Cipresse  gath'red  at  a  dead  man's  grave, 

These  Scriech-owles  feathers,  and  this  pricking  bryer. 

That  all  thy  thorny  Cares  an  end  may  have. 

Then  come  you  Fairies,  dance  with  mee  a  round  : 

Dance  in  this  circle,  let  my  love  be  center. 

Melodiously  breath  out  a  charming  sound  ; 

Melt  her  hard  heart,  that  some  remorse  may  enter. 

In  vain  are  all  the  charmes  I  can  devise, 

Shee  hath  an  Arte  to  breake  them  with  her  eyes. 

Like  so  many  other  things  which  have  been  attributed  to  Sylvester, 
the  curious  love-incantation  last  given  must  be  regarded  as  of  doubtful 
authenticity.  It  is  one  (Son.  22,  p.  634,  beginning  '  Thou  art  not  faire 
for  all  thy  red  and  white,'  being  another)  of  those  pieces  from  the  post- 
humous additions  to  the  Sylvester  folio  which  Sir  Egerton  Brydges, 
'  on  the  authority  of  cotemporary  MSS.  of  the  British  Museum,'  prints 
as  Thomas  Campion's  {Excerpta  Tudoriana,  i,  18 14,  36).  The  dififi-_ 
culty  is  to  believe  that  two  productions  of  so  strongly-marked  a  physi- 
ognomy as  it  and  its  associate  above  are  not  from  one  and  the  same  pen. 
A  specimen  of  a  different  order  may  now  be  given  illustrating  Sylves- 
ter's more  characteristic  style  ;  for  it  was  hardly  by  pictures  so  ghastly- 
grim  as  these  that  the  English  Du  Bartas  earned  his  appellation  of 
'  the  silver-tongued,'  but  by  such  qualities  as  are  shewn  in  this  first  of 
two  isolated  sonnets  occupying  the  page  directly  following  the  quaintly- 
beautiful  Ode  to  Astraa  in  an  eaflier  portion  of  the  folio  : — 


JVotcs  277 

Sweet  mouth,  that  sendst  a  muskic-rosed  breath, 
Fountain  of  Nectar,  and  delightful!  Balm  ; 
Eyes  cloudy-clear,  smile-frowning,  stormy-calm, 
Whose  eveiy  glance  darts  mee  a  living-death  ; 
Brows,  bending  quaintly  your  round  Eben  Arks, 
Smile,  that  then  Venus  sooner  Mars  besots  ; 
Locks  more  then  golden,  curl'd  in  curious  knots. 
Where,  in  close  ambush,  wanton  Cupid  lurks  ; 
Grace  Angel-like,  fair  fore -head,  smoth  and  high, 
Pure  white,  that  dimm'st  the  Lillies  of  the  Vale  ; 
Vermilion  Rose,  that  mak'st  Aurora  pale  : 
Rare  spirit,  to  rule  this  beauties  Emperie, 
If  in  your  force  Divine  effects  I  view, 
Ah,  who  can  blame  me,  if  I  worship  you  ? 

With  this  compare  a  similar  piece  of  fancy  portraiture  by  the  author  of 
Parthenophil  and  Parthenophe  (Son.  71,  ed.  Grosart,  p.  47) : — 

Those  haires  of  Angels  gold,  thy  natures  treasure, 

(For  thou  by  nature  Angellike  art  framed) 

Those  lovely  browes,  broade  bridges  of  sweet  pleasure, 

Arche  two  cleare  springs  of  graces  gratious  named  ; 

There  graces  infinite  do  bathe  and  sporte  : 

Under  on  both  sides  those  two  pretious  hilles 

Where  Phoeb'e  and  Venus  have  a  severall  forte  : 

Her  couche  with  snowie  lillyes  Phcebe  filles. 

But  Venus  with  redde  Roses  her's  adorneth  ; 

There  they  with  silent  tokens  doe  dispute, 

Whilst  Phoebe  Venus,  Venus  Phoebe  scorneth. 

And  all  the  graces  Judgers  there  sit  mute 

To  give  their  verdict,  till  great  Jove  said  this — 

Dianaes  arrowes  wounde  not  like  thy  kisse. 

Barnabe  Barnes, 

SSilliam  S'balisjjcarc. 

The  controversy  on  the  Sonnets  attributed  to  Shakspeare  is  a  conse- 
quence of  the  obscurity  in  which  everything  about  him  is  involved.  His 
day  and  generation  are  not  so  veiy  remote  from  our  own,  yet  for  all  that 
we  know  of  the  personal  history  of  this  greatest  among  the  children  of 
men,  he  might  almost  as  -well  be  one  of  the  shadowy  figures  in  Arthurian 
legend.  Hence  not  a  little  of  what  we  habitually  accept  as  Shakspeare's 
biography  rests  wholly  on  surmise.  If,  however,  eveiy  attempt  towards 
the  elucidation,  by  biographical  means,  of  these  '  deep-brained  sonnets  ' ' 
must  proceed  upon  the  unstable  ground  of  conjecture  only,  there  is  one 
thing  of  which  we  may  feel  absolutely  certain, — that  they  were  written 
by  Shakspeare.  With  a  few  trifling  exceptions  every  Sonnet  bears,  in 
high  relief,  the  image  and  superscription  of  him  who  (without  irreverence) 

1  Shakspeare's  own  epithet :  A  Lovers  complaint,  209  (printed  at  the  end  of  the 
Sonnets). 


27S  Notes 

wrote  as  never  man  wrote  ;  while,  so  far  as  is  known,  he  never  once  dis- 
avowed the  authorship  during  the  seven  years  which  intervened  between 
their  surreptitious  publication  with  his  name,  and  his  death  in  1616.  It 
is  when  we  come  to  contemplate  the  feelings  and  the  passions  forming 
the  substance  of  the  poems,  with  the  strange,  sad,  equivocal  story  told 
there,  and  venture  on  the  identification  of  the  person  or  persons  whom 
the  poet  addresses  or  feigns  to  address,  that  the  grand  difficulty  con- 
fronts us.  '  Shake-Speares  Sonnets.  Never  before  Imprinted,'  were 
published  in  a  small-quarto  volume  in  1609  by  Thomas  Thorpe,  a 
bookseller  of  some  note.  Prefixed  was  the  following  dedication  (reduced 
from  the  original  edition),  the  enigmatical  character  of  which  has  occa- 
sioned much  learned  embarrassment,  and  seems  not  even  yet  to  have 
quite  lost  its  power  of  setting  critics  by  the  ears  : 

TO. THE. ONLIE. begetter. OF. 

THESE. INSVING.  SONNETS. 

M"".  W.  H.    ALL.HAPPINESSE. 

AND.THAT.ETERNITIE. 

PROMISED. 

BY. 

OVR.  EVER-LIVING.  POET. 

W  I  S  H  E  T  H  . 

THE.  WELL-WISHING. 

ADVENTVRER.IN. 

SETTING. 

FORTH. 

T.    T. 

It  were  idle  to  describe  the  various  cuts  which  have  been  made  at  this 
Gordian  knot.  Suffice  it  to  say  that  the  initials  '  T.  T.'  have  always 
been  understood  to  be  those  of  the  publisher,  Thomas  Thorpe,  and  that 
authorities  are  now  pretty  well  agreed  on  the  more  crucial  '  Mr.  W.  H.' 
as  veiling  the  fam'ily  name  of  the  Earl  of  Pembroke— William  Herbert ; ' 
the  inscription  reading  thus  :    Thomas  Thorpe,  the  well-wishing  adven- 


>  This  important  identification  was  made  by  B.  Heywood  Bright  in  or  about  1819, 
but  first  publicly  announced  by  James  Boaden  in  The  Gentleman's  Mag-azine,  Oct. 
1832,  on  independent  discovery.  See  Boadcn's  work  On  the  Sonnets  of  Shakespeare 
(1837)- 


Notes 


279 


turer,^  in  setting  forth,  ivisheth  to  Mr.  W.  H.,  the  only  begetter  of  these 
insuiiig  Sonnets,  all  happiness  and  that  eternity  promised  by  our  ever- 
living  poet.  There  does  not  seem  to  be  so  insuperable  a  difficulty  in  the 
expression  '  onlie  begetter '  as  the  quantity  of  ink  which  has  been  shed 
over  it  would  bespeak.  It  can  bear  but  two  meanings.  If,  on  the  one 
hand,  it  means  that  Herbert  was  the  %o\q.  procurer  oi  the  Sonnets  for  the 
piratical  Thorpe,  it  is  simply  a  statement  of  fact  on  the  best  authority, 
which, even  if  it  were  not  entirely  credible,  we  should  be  bound  to  accept. 
Moreover,  it  furnishes  the  only  clue  we  possess  as  to  how  the  poems 
ever  found  their  way  out  of  that  '  private  '  circle  within  which  we  learn 
on  Meres's  testimony  they  were  known  prior  to  1598,'-'  and  beyond  which 
Shakspeare  doubtless  never  intended  them  to  go.  If,  on  the  other,  we 
are  to  take  '  begetter  '  in  its  ordinary  and  more  obvious  sense  of  the  per- 
son to  who?n  the  poems  owed  their  existence,  the  solution  is  equally  simple. 
In  all  likelihood  Thorpe  was  not  ignorant  of  the  part  played  by  Herbert 
in  the  secret  drama  of  the  Sonnets,  and  itched  to  blab  it.  True  his 
'  onlie  '  exaggerates  that  part,  whatever  its  real  extent  may  have  been  ; 
but  it  seems  ridiculous  to  stickle  for  verbal  precision  where  the  writer  had 
so  obvious  a  motive  for  exaggeration.  '  Onlie  '  was  but  a  bit  of  flattering 
homage  on  the  part  of  the  grateful  pirate  to  his  noble  procurer.  '  The 
onlie  begetter ' ! — Thorpe's  expression  implies  both  senses — procurer  and 
originator — and  was  no  doubt  chosen  for  that  reason. 

Turning  to  the  more  important  question  of  the  groundwork  or  sub- 
ject-matter of  the  Sonnets,  it  will  be  obvious  to  those  who  have  any 
idea  of  its  dimensions  that  it  cannot  be  discussed  within  the  limits  of  an 
Anthology.  The  reader  must  pursue  it  for  himself  in  the  elaborate  and 
exhaustive  works  devoted  to  die  subject,  especially  those  of  Mr.  Charles 
Armitage  Brown  ^  and  Mr.  Gerald  Massey,''  the  protagonists  of  the  two 
great  opposite  theories  of  the  Sonnets,  as,  according  to  the  former.  Auto- 
biographic or  Personal,  and,  according  to  the  latter,  Dramatic  (vicari- 
ous) or  Impersonal.  Whichever  of  these  works  may  ultimately  determine 
his  faith — and  I  cannot  doubt  that  it  will  be  Mr.  Massey's  masterly  and 


1  On  ihe  particular  use  of  the  word  '  adventurer  '  about  this  time,  in  relation  to  its 
occurrence  in  the  inscription,  consult  Dr.  Grosart's  Essay  prefixed  to  his  edition  of 
Donne's  Poems  (i,  1873,  pp.  xlv-xlvii). 

2  Francis  Meres  {Palladis  Tainia.  WHs  Treasury,  &c.,  1598,  f.  281-2)  :  ■  As  the 
soule  of  Euphorbus  was  thought  to  live  in  Pythagoras  :  so  the  sweete  wittiesoule  of 
Ovid  lives  in  mellifluous  &  hony-tongued  Shakespeare,  witnes  his  Venus  and 
Adonis,  his  Lucrece,  his  sugred  Sonnets  among  his  private  friends,  &c.' 

^  Shakespeare's  A  utobiographical  Poems.  Being  his  Sonnets  clearly  developed  : 
•with  his  Character  draiun  chiejly  fro7n  his  7i'orks.     1838. 

*  Shakspeare' s  Sonnets  never  before  interpreted,  &c.,i866  ;  and  a  second  edition, 
The  Secret  Drama  0/ Shakspeare' s  Sonnets  Unfolded,  luith  the  Characters  Identi- 
fied, 1S72,  containing  a  valuable  Supplementary  Chapter.  The  most  noteworthy 
among  recent  contributions  to  this  literature  are  the  papers  of  Mr.  F.  G.  Fleay  ('On 
the  Motive  of  Shakspere's  Sonnets,'  1-125  ;  Macmillan's  Magazine,  March,  1875), 
and  Mr.  T.  A.  Spalding  (Gentleman  s  Magazitie,  iMarch,  1S78;. 


2  So  JVoies 

Slilliam  Sljaksprarc. 

luminous  exposition — there  is  one  grand  principle,  insufficiently  recog- 
nised in  either,  which  the  reader  embarking  on  this  vast  and  perilous  in- 
quiry will  do  well  to  keep  steadfastly  before  him.  It  was  well  put  by  the 
late  Robert  Bell  in  an  introduction  to  the  Sonnets  :  '  All  poetry  is  auto- 
biographical. But  the  particle  of  actual  life  out  of  which  verse  is  wrought 
may  be,  and  almost  always  is,  wholly  incommensurate  to  the  emotion 
depicted,  and  remote  from  the  forms  into  which  it  is  ultimately  shaped. 
We  should  remember,  also,  that  poets  draw  upon  two  sources — expe- 
rience and  observation  ;  and  who  shall  undertake  to  separate  the  realities 
from  the  creations  ? ' '  Mr.  Bell  said  an  equally  true  thing  some  ten  years 
later  when  he  said  of  the  Shakspeare  theories  generally,  that  they  '  help 
materiallytospoilour  enjoyment  of  him.'  "^  That  the  poems  themselves, 
and  not  the  excogitations  of  theorists  on  them,  are  his  primary  and  proper 
concern,  is  a  score  on  which  the  reader  need  have  no  misgivings.  An 
earnest  study  of  any  portion  of  them  will  teach  him  more  of  the  mind 
and  heart  of  Shakspeare  and  bear  him  further  into  the  poet's  inmost 
soul  than  all  the  brain-spun  systems  that  ever  were  written.  So  Shelley 
seems  to  have  been  taught,  if,  entertaining  a  recent  happy  suggestion,'' 
we  take  that  most  exquisite  fragment  of  his  to  have  been  evoked  by 
the  Sonnets : — 

'  I  am  as  a  spirit  who  has  dwelt 
Within  his  heart  of  hearts  ;  and  I  have  felt 
His  feelings,  and  have  thought  his  thoughts,  and  known 
The  inmost  converse  of  his  soul,  the  tone 
-■  Unheard  but  in  the  silence  of  his  blood. 

When  all  the  pulses  in  their  multitude 
Image  the  trembling  calm  of  summer  seas. 
I  have  unlocked  the  golden  melodies 
Of  his  deep  soul,  as  with  a  master-key, 
And  loosened  them,  and  bathed  myself  therein — 
Even  as  an  eagle  in  a  thunder-mist 
Clothing  his  wings  with  lightning.' * 

The  following  are  a  few  of  the  more  noteworthy  opinions  which  have 
been  recorded  of  Shakspeare's  Sonnets.  '  There  is  extant  a  small  Volume 
of  miscellaneous  Poems  in  which  Shakespeare  expresses  his  own  feelings 
in  his  own  Person.  It  is  not  difficult  to  conceive  that  the  Editor,  George 
Steevens,  should  have  been  insensible  to  the  beauties  of  one  portion  of 
that  Volume,  the  Sonnets  ;  *  though  there  is  not  a  part  of  the  writings  of 


'  The  Poems  of  William  Shakspeare.     Edited  by  Robert  Bell.     1855,  p.  152. 
The  Fortnightly  Review.  August  ist,  1866  :'  Art.    '  Shakespeare's  Sonnets.' 


3  Notes  and  Queries.  5th  S.  VI,  Nov.  4,  1876. 
*  Mr.  Garnett^s  Relics  0/ Shelley,  lE 


862,  p.  81. 


Steevens  ?,  Advertisement  to  {he  1793  edition  of  the  Plays,  vol.  i,  p.vii  :  '  We  have 
not  reprinted  the  Sonnets,  &c.,  of  Shakspeare,  because  the  strongest  act  of  Parliament 


Notes  281 

this  Poet  where  is  found  in  an  equal  compass  a  greater  number  of  ex- 
quisite feelings  felicitously  expressed.' — IVordsioorth.^ 

'  These  Sonnets,  like  the  Venus  and  Adonis,  and  the  Rape  of  Lucrece, 
are  characterized  by  boundless  fertility  and  laboured  condensation  of 
thought,  with  perfection  of  sweetness  in  rhythm  and  metre.' — Coleridge.'^ 

'The  transcendent  beauty  of  Shakespeare's  Sonnets  is  now  univer- 
sally felt  and  acknowledged  ;  and  the  insolent  contempt  with  which 
Steevens  presumed  to  speak  of  them,  is  only  remembered  to  the  injury 
of  the  critic's  reputation.  They  contain  such  a  quantity  of  profound 
thought  as  must  astonish  every  reflecting  reader  ;  they  are  adorned  by 
splendid  and  delicate  imagery  ;  they  are  sublime,  pathetic,  tender,  or 
sweetly  playful ;  while  they  delight  the  ear  by  their  fluency,  and  their 
varied  harmonies  of  rhythm.  Amid  so  much  excellence,  their  occasional 
conceits  and  quaintness  are  forgotten.' — Dyce.'^ 

'  There  is  nothing  more  remarkable  or  fascinating  in  English  poetry. 
.  .  .  We  read  them  again  and  again,  and  find  each  time  some  new  proof 
of  his  almost  superhuman  insight  into  human  nature  ;  of  his  unrivalled 
mastery  over  all  the  tones  of  love.  We  cannot  bring  ourselves  to  wish 
that  "  Shakspeare  had  never  written  them,"  ^  or  that  the  world  should 
have  wanted  perhaps  the  most  powerful  and  certainly  the  most  singular, 
utterances  of  passion  which  Poetry  has  yet  supplied.' — F.  T.  Palgrave.^ 

'  Shakespeare's  Sonnets  are  so  heavily  laden  with  meaning,  so 
double-shotted,  if  one  may  so  speak,  with  thought,  so  penetrated  and 
pervaded  with  a  repressed  passion,  that,  packed  as  all  this  is  into  nar- 
rowest limits,  it  sometimes  imparts  no  little  obscurity  to  them  ;  and 
they  often  require  to  be  heard  or  read  not  once  but  many  times,  in  fact 
to  be  studied,  before  they  reveal  to  us  all  the  treasures  of  thought  and 
feeling  which  they  contain.' — Dr.  Trench.^ 

1  conclude  these  introductory  remarks  with  a  word-portrait  of  Shak- 
speare by  Ben  Jonson  which  is  much  less  generally  known  than  it 
deserves  to  be.  Mr.  Massey  quoting  it  in  his  later  work  on  the  Sonnets, 
observes :  '  If  it  had  not  been  for  the  persistent  endeavour  to  prove 
Shakspeare  a  lawyer,  and  too  confidently  assumed  that  the  character, 
or  rather  the  name  of  "Ovid,"  in  the  i'^^^aj^^;' (produced  at  Shak- 

th.-it  could  be  framed,  would  fail  to  compel  readers  into  their  service.'  Steevens  had 
reproduced  the  Sonnets  with  commendable  accuracy  seven-and-twenty  years  Delore 
(Tuienty  of  the  Flays  of  Shakespeare,  h.c.,^,\■o\■!,.,l.^(>li). 

'  Essay,  Supplementary  to  the  Preface.     Wordsworth  s  Poems,  1815,  1,  352- 

2  Speciviens  of  the  Table  Talk  of  S.  T.  C.  1835,  11,  181. 

3  Specimens  of  English  Sonnets,  1S33,  p.  213.  .         „•,,,„ 
<■  Notwithstanding  the  frequent  beauties  of  these  Sonnets  .  .  .  it  is  impossible  to 

wish  that  Shakspearehadnever  written  them.'— Hallam'sZ.zV(Praif«r?<;/£7<r<7/f,iii.2&4- 

5  Son^s  and  Sonnets  by  William  Shakespeare.     Edited  by  Francis  Turner  i  al- 

grave.  i86^,  p.  24^.  ,      ,       „  /      i-        ^r     uj, 

«  A  Household  Book  of  English  Poetry,  2nd  ed.,  1870,  p.  39S  (earlier.  The  His- 
tory of  the  English  Sonnet :  Dublin  Afternoon  Lectures,  [1866],  iv,  144). 


282  Notes 

speare's  theatre,  1601),  was  intended  for  Shakspeare,  it  would  have 
been  seen  that  it  is  in  the  character  of  "  Virgil  "  that  Jonson  has  rendered 
the  nature  of  the  man,  the  quality  of  his  learning,  the  affluence  of  his 
poetry,  the  height  at  which  the  poet  himself  stood  above  his  work,  in 
the  truest,  best  likeness  of  Shakspeare  extant.'  The  interlocutors  are 
Ciesar,  Horace,  Gallus,  and  Tibullus.  Note  that  '  Horace  '  represents 
Ben  himself,  and  is  singled  out  by  Csesar  for  his  opinion  as  being  '  the 
poorest,  and  likelyest  to  envie,  or  to  detract '  [Poetaster,  Or  his  Arraigne- 
ment,  Act  v,  sc.  i :  Workcs,  folio,  1616,  p.  332) : — 

C^SAR. 

Say  then,  lov'd  Horace,  thy  true  thought  of  Virgil. 

HORACE. 
I  judge  him  of  a  rectified  spirit, 
By  many  revolutions  of  discourse 
(In  his  bright  reasons  influence)  refin'd 
From  all  the  tartarous  moodes  of  common  men  ; 
Bearing  the  nature  and  similitude 
Of  a  right  heavenly  bodie  :  most  severe 
In  fashion  and  collection  of  himselfe. 
And  then  as  cleare  and  confident  as  Jove. 

GALLUS. 

And  yet  so  chaste  and  tender  is  his  eare 
In  suffering  any  syllable  to  passe 
That  he  thinkes  may  become  the  honour'd  name 
Of  issue  to  his  so-examin'd  selfe, 
That  all  the  lasting  fruits  of  his  full  merit 
In  his  owne  Poemes  he  doth  still  distaste  : 
As  if  his  mindes  peece,  which  he  strove  to  paint, 
Could  not  with  fleshly  pencils  have  her  right. 

TIBULLUS. 
But,  to  approve  his  workes  of  soveraigne  worth, 
This  observation  (me  thinkes)  more  then  sei-ves, 
And  is  not  vulgar  :  That  which  he  hath  writ 
Is  with  such  judgement  labour'd  and  distill'd 
Through  all  the  needful  uses  of  our  lives, 
That  could  a  man  remember  but  his  lines, 
He  should  not  touch  at  any  serious  point, 
But  he  might  breathe  his  spirit  out  of  him. 

C^SAR. 
You  meane,  he  might  repeat  part  of  his  workes, 
As  fit  for  any  conference  he  can  use  ? 

TIBULLUS. 
True,  royall  Csesar. 

C^SAR. 

Worthily  observ'd  : 
And  a  most  worthie  vertue  in  his  workes. 
What  thinks  materiall  Horace  of  his  learning  ? 


Notes  283 

HORACE. 

His  learning  savours  not  the  schoole-like  glosse 
That  most  consists  in  ecchoing  wordes  and  terms, 
And  soonest  wins  a  man  an  empty  name  ; 
Nor  any  long  or  far-fetcht  circumstance, 
Wrapt  in  the  curious  generalties  of  artes  : 
But  a  direct  and  analyticke  summe 
Of  all  the  worth  and  first  effects  of  artes. 
And  for  his  Poesie,  'tis  so  ramm'd  with  life. 
That  it  shall  gather  strength  of  life  with  being, 
And  live  hereafter  more  admir'd  then  now.' 

As  Mr.  Massey  well  says  on  citing  these  lines,  how  cordially  one  can 
repeat  their  author's  epitaph — 

'  O  Rare  Ben  Jonson  ! ' 


PAGE 

26 — L.  Music  to  hear,  &c.  =  O  thou  whom  it  is  music  to  hear,  why 

hear'st  thou,  &c.    confounds  =  confoundest — an  inflection  dictated 

by  euphony  in  the  case  of  verbs  ending  in  d  or  t.     So  2  Hen.   VI, 

i,  I,  19: 

'  O  Lord  that  lends  me  life.' 

9.  '  If  two  strings  are  tuned  in  perfect  unison,  and  one  only  is  struck, 
a  very  sensible  vibration  takes  place  in  the  other.  This  is  called 
sympathetic  vibration.'— A'«?|^/2/.  See  Mr.  Massey's  interesting 
chapter  in  which  he  contends  that  this  and  other  sentiments  and 
arguments  in  the  earliest  group  of  the  Sonnets  were  derived  from 
the  3rd  Book  of  Sidney's  Arcadia. 

27 — Lll,  3-4.  Cp.  Drummond,  cxviil,  5-6,  and  Wordsworth,  ccxv, 
12-14. 

Liii.   '  Compare  this  sonnet  with  In  Memoriam  Ixxv-lxxvii '  [  = 
Ixxiv-lxxvi,  the  earlier  eds.] — Tennysoniana,  2nd  ed.,  1S79,  p.  59- 

28 — Liv.  that  fair  thou  ozu'st  =  that  beauty  thou  ownest. 

LV.  Making  a  cotiplement,  &c.  E.g.,^^tT\i^r'%Amoretti,<^  (supra, 
p.  243)  and  64  ;  and  the  following  :  Daniel's  Delia,  19 : — 

Restore  thy  tresses  to  the  golden  Ore, 

Yeeld  Cithereas  sonne  those  Arkes  of  love  ; 

Bequeath  the  heavens  the  starres  that  I  adore, 

And  to  th'  Orient  do  thy  Pearles  remove  ; 

Yeeld  thy  hands  pride  unto  th'  Ivor}'  white, 

T'  Arabian  odors  give  thy  breathing  sweete. 

Restore  thy  blush  unto  Aurora  bright. 

To  Thetis  give  the  honour  of  thy  feete  ; 

Let  Venus  have  thy  graces  her  resign'd, 

And  thy  sweet  voice  give  back  unto  the  Spheares  ; 

*  L.  31  savours  (1640) ;  '  labours '  (1616). 


284  Notes 

SJUlliam  ^bahspcnrc. 

But  yet  restore  thy  fierce  and  cmell  mind 
To  Hyrcan  Tygres,  and  to  ruthles  Beares. 
Yeeld  to  the  Marble  thy  hard  hart  againe  ; 
So  shalt  thou  cease  to  plague,  and  I  to  paine. 

Samuel  Daniel. 

'B&mes's Partkenopkil and Fartkeiiophe,  Son.48,ed.Grosart,p.32  : — 

I  wish  no  rich-refinde  Arabian  gold, 

Nor  Orient  Indian  pearle,  rare  natures  wonder, 

No  Diamondes  th'  Aegiptian  surges  under, 

No  Rubyes  of  America  deare  sold, 

Nor  Saphyres  which  rich  Affrike  sandes  enfold — 

Treasures  far  distant,  from  thise  Isle  asunder  ; 

Barbarian  Ivories  in  contempt  I  hold  ; 

But  onely  this,  this  onely  Venus  graunt. 

That  I  my  sweet  Parthenophe  may  get : 

Her  heires  no  grace  of  golden  wyers  want, 

Pure  pearles  with  perfect  Rubines  are  in  set. 

True  Dyamondes  in  eyes,  Saphires  in  vaynes, 

Nor  can  I  that  soft  Ivory  skinne  forget : 

England  in  one  small  subject  such  containes, 

Bamabe  Barnes. 

Madrigal  4,  Ibid,  p.  10  : — 

There  had  my  Zeuxes  place  and  time  to  draw 

My  mistresse  pourtraict,  which  on  plantane  table 
With  nature  matching  colours  as  he  saw 
Her  leaning  on  her  elbow,  tho  not  able. 
He  gan  with  vermil,  gold,  white,  and  sable 
To  shadow  forth  :  and  with  a  skilful!  knuckle 

Lively  set  out  my  fortunes  fable. 
On  lippes  a  rose,  on  hand  an  hony-suckle. 
For  nature  fram'd  that  arbour  in  such  orders 

That  roses  did  with  woodbynes  buckle, 
Whose  shadow  trembling  on  her  lovely  face 
Pie  left  unshadow'd  :  there  arte  lost  his  grace, 
And  that  white  lillie  leafe  with  fringed  borders 
Of  Angels  gold  vayled  the  skyes 
Of  myne  heavens  hierarchic  which  clos'd  her  eyes. 

Bamabe  Barnes. 

and  Davies  of  Hereford's  Wittes  Pilgrimage,  [1610?],  Son.  73  :— 

Thy  Beauties  blush,  like  fairest  Morne  in  Maie, 

(Faire-Honied  Sweet)  doth  so  intrance  mine  Eies 

That  while  thou  dost  those  Roses  rich  display 

They  see  Heav'ns  hue  through  thy  skins  Christal  skies ; 

And  did  my  fault  nor  thine  enforce  the  same, 

I  stil  could  wish  to  see  that  Heav'nly  Blush  : 

Yea,  I  would  see  that  glory  to  my  shame. 

So  that  my  faces  shame  would  cause  that  flush. 

Then  blame  me  not  if  (when  thy  Cheeks  I  see 

Died  in  a  Tincture  that  is  so  divine) 


Notes  285 

PAGE  , 

My  Cheeks  in  selfsame  Colour  Dyed  be 
To  make  thine  spread  their  Dy,  by  dying  mine  : 
Then,  blush  thou  not,  for  blushing  in  this  wise 
Sith  that  Hue  from,  and  for  thy  grace  doth  rise. 

John  Davies. 

2g_LVl.  Cp.  Sidney's  song  in  the  3rd  Book  of  the  Arcadia,  beginning 

'  My  true  love  hath  my  heart,  and  I  have  his, 
By  just  exchange  one  for  the  other  giv'ne,'  ' 

and  the  47th  Son.  of  Barnes's  Parthenophil and ParthenopJu.    Read 
also  Spenser's  Amoretti,  45. 

XSW.  fight :  quarto  'worth.'  The  present  reading  was  supplied 
by  Theobald,  who  also  suggested  that  if  'worth'  were  retained, 
forth  should  be  substituted  for  '  quite  '  in  1.  II. 
30 — LViil,  1-2.  Mr.  Fleay  (article  named,  p.  279,  foot-note)  sees  in 
this  passage  an  allusion  to  what  he  maintains  was  Shakspeare's 
own  occasional  employment  about  the  time  when  it  is  supposed 
the  first  series  of  the  Sonnets  (1-125)  was  written  :  1594-1596. 
'  Here,'  he  observes,  '  the  double  meaning  of  "travel",  as  then 
spelt  ['  travaill '],  is  clearly  played  on  by  the  poet.  .  .  .  Travel- 
ling is  clearly  what  we  should  call  strolling.'  See  under  LXXXVII, 
p.  295.      11-12.  Cp.  Romeo  and  Juliet,  i,  5,  47  : 

'  She  hangs  upon  the  cheek  of  Night 
Like  a  rich  jewel  in  an  Ethiope's  ear.' 

LIX,  7.  Cp.  LXII,  8  (with  note).     11-12.  Cp.  Cymbeline,  ii,  3  : 

'  Hark,  hark  !  the  lark  at  heaven's  gate  sings.' 

13-14.  Cp.  Dnimmond  (cxxx,  13-14) : 

'  From  this  so  high  transcending  rapture  springs, 
That  I,  all  else  defaced,  not  envy  kings  ; ' 


1  I  subjoin  the  version  of  this  '  ditty  made  by  the  noble  knight  Sir  Philip  Sidney,' 
as  given  in  Puttenham's  Arte  of  English  Poesie,  1589  (Lib.  iii,  chap,  xix,  p.  188), 
and  adopted  by  Ellis  (Specimens,  4th  ed.  1811,  ii,  263)  and  Mr.  Palgrave  {Golden. 

TV^ajKry,  1861,  p.  15)  :—         ,     ,  ^  ,  t  ,.        ,.• 

•  My  true  love  hath  my  heart  and  I  have  his, 
i5y  just  exchange  one  for  another  geven  : 
I  holde  his  deare,  and  mine  he  cannot  misse, 
There  never  was  a  better  bargaine  driven. 

My  true  love  hath  my  heart  and  I  have  his. 

My  heart  in  me  keepes  him  and  me  in  one, 

My  heart  in  him  his  thoughts  and  sences  guides  : 

He  loves  my  heart,  for  once  it  was  his  owne, 

I  cherish  his  because  in  me  it  bides. 

My  true  love  hath  my  heart,  and  I  have  his.' 
Puttenham  adduces  the  song  as  an  example  of  ^Epimone,  or  the  Love-burden,' 
whence  Mr.  Palgrave  infers  {Academy,}v\y  7th,  1877)  that  he  had  Sidneian  authority 
for  his  text,  which  certainly  '  differs  greatly  in  poetical  effect  from  that  of  the  ^rcrt- 
dia  :  '  but  to  me  it  seems  more  probable  that  the  old  critic  altered  the  origmal 
arrangement  to  suit  his  own  immediate  purpose. 


286  Notes 

S®;illiam  Sljahspeare. 

PAGE 

on  which  see  note,  p.  330.  14.  Cp.  S.  Daniel  {Civile  Wars,  1595, 
Bk.  iii,  St.  64,  fol.  55): 

'  Nor  chaung  his  state  with  him  that  Scepters  weildes.' 
31 — LX,  5.  Cp.  B.  Griffin  {Fidessa,  1596,  Son.  30) : 

.  .   .   '  eyes  .  .  .  drowned 
In  your  own  teares.' 

And  moan  the  expense  of  7nany  a  vanished  sight :  i.e.,  the  loss  or 
disappearance  of,  &c. ;  '  expense  '  being  used  in  precisely  the  same 
sense  as  the  verb-form  terminating  the  107th  Son.  (xciv,  p.  48) : 

'  When  tyrants'  crests  and  tombs  of  brass  are  spent.' 
The  passage  has  been  overlaid  by  the  perverse  ingenuity  of  com- 
mentators, who  have  insisted  on  regarding  sight  as  an  instance  of 
the  old  form  of  '  sigh.'     Only  a  pedant  could  ever  for  a  moment 
mistake  the  poet's  meaning.     Cp.  Tennyson's 

'  touch  of  a  vanish'd  hand, 
And  the  sound  of  a  voice  that  is  still.' 

In  this  affecting  sonnet — keeping  out  its  glad  ending — we  recog- 
nize the  same  sad  mood  as  that  which  finds  such  unique  expression 
in  Charles  Lamb's  Old  Fa7ni  liar  Faces,  or  the  'Tears,  idle  tears' 
of  the  Laureate.  But  modem  poetry  is  only  too  full  of  such  sor- 
rowing. In  connexion  with  the  passage  specially  under  notice 
and  the  '  ladies  dead  '  of  xciii  (p.  47)  we  may  recall  Browning's 
pathetic  cry  {A  Toccata  of  Galuppi's) : 

'  Dear  dead  women,  with  such  hair,  too — what's  become 

of  all  the  gold 
Used  to  hang  and  brush  their  bosoms  ?  ' 

LXI.  obsequious  tear  '  Besides  the  obvious  sense,  is  here  used 
with  reference  to  the  obsequies oi  the  dead.' — F.  T.  Palgrave.  So 
Lucius  to  Marcus  {Titus  Andronicus,  v,  3,  151) : 

'  draw  you  near. 
To  shed  obsequious  tears  upon  this  trunk.' 

dear-religious  love.  '  That  is,  "love  making  a  religion  of  its  affec- 
tions," says  Walker  {Ciit.  Exam.  &c.,  vol.  i,  p.  36),  at  whose  sug- 
gestion I  have  inserted  the  hyphen.  He  compares  our  author's 
Lover's  Complaint  [247-250]  : 

"  The  accident  which  brought  me  to  her  eye 
Upon  the  moment  did  her  force  subdue. 
And  now  she  would  the  cag^d  cloister  fly  : 
Religious  love  put  out  Religion's  eye."' — Dyce. 


Notes  287 


PAGE 


32 — LXII.  ^^Ji?;-7V  =  preserve,  keep.  8.  Cp.  LIX,  7.  Shakspeare,  when 
occasion  offers,  does  not  hesitate  to  speak  out  boldly  his  assurance 
of  fame.  He  /•wt'-chehad  '  laid  great  bases  for  eternity  '  (Son.  125) ; 
and  that  he  valued  the  lasting  remembrance  of  posterity  as  his  dear- 
est inheritance  is  as  plainly  evidenced  in  the  Sonnets  as  if,  with  a 
later  immortal,  he  had  only  chanted  the  prayer  ( The  Legend  of 
Juhal  and  Other  Poems,  by  George  Eliot,  2nd  ed.  1S74)  : 

'  O  may  I  join  the  choir  invisible 
Of  those  immortal  dead  who  live  again 
In.  minds  made  belter  by  their  presence  :  live 
In  pulses  stirred  to  generosity. 
In  deeds  of  daring  rectitude,  in  scorn 
For  miserable  aims  that  end  with  self, 
In  thoughts  sublime  that  pierce  the  night  like  stars, 
And  with  their  mild  persistence  urge  man's  search 
To  vaster  issues.' 

But  from  such  passages  as  these  we  see  that  with  that  assurance  was 
joined  an  ardent  recognition  of  the  merits  of  others.  It  will  pro- 
bably never  be  conclusively  demonstrated  who  the  '  better  spirit ' 
of  the  80th  Sonnet  was  ;  but  to  whomsoever  we  choose  to  assign 
the  honour, — whether  to  Daniel  with  Boaden,  Marlowe  with  Mr. 
Massey,  Chapman  with  Mr.  Minto,  or  Nash  with  Mr.  Fleay — it 
furnishes  us  with  a  memorable  instance  of  that  noble  modesty,  that 
exaggerated  sense  of  intellectual  indebtedness  which  would  seem 
to  be  characteristic  of  the  very  greatest  natures.  The  reader  will 
call  to  mind  Burns's  tribute  to  Robert  Fergusson,  Coleridge's  to 
Bowles,  Scott's  to  Miss  Ferrier,  &c. 

LXlii.  rack.  '  The  winds  in  the  upper  region  (which  move  the 
clouds  above,  which  we  call  the  rack,  and  are  not  perceived  below) 
pass  without  noise.' — Bacon's  Sylva  Sylvarum,  cent,  ii,  §  115 
(quoted  by  Clark  and  Wright :  Hamkt,  Clarendon  Press  ed.).  So 
Hamlet,  ii,  2,  468  : 

'  But  as  we  often  see,  against  some  storm, 
A  silence  in  the  heavens,  the  rack  stand  still. 
The  bold  winds  speechless,  and  the  orb  below 
As  hush  as  death,  anon  the  dreadful  thunder 
Doth  rend  the  region,'  &c. 
and  Fairfax,  quoted  in  England's  Parnassus  (Park's  Heliconia,  iii, 

448) : 

'Still  was  the  ayre,  the  racke  nor  came  nor  went. 

It  would  seem  to  include  in  its  meaning  also  the  motion  of  the 

clouds,  or  what  in  Scotland  is  known  as  'the  carry,' used  with 

poetical  licence  by  Tannahill  for  the  firmament : 

'  No  a  starn  in  a'  the  carry  ; ' 


288  Notes 

■m 
PAGE 

with  which  cp.  a  passage   in  The  Raigne  of  King  Edward  the 
Third,  ii,  i,  3  (Capell's  Prolusions,  1760,  Pt.  II,  p.  15) : 

'  And  changing  passions,  like  inconstant  clouds, — 

That,  rackt  upon  the  carriage  of  the  winds, 

Increase,  and  die.' 

Elsewhere  in  Shakspeare  the  word  is  employed  as  an  intransitive 
verb,  to  stretch  or  separate,  as  clouds  with  the  wind, — '  the  racking 
clouds '  (<?  Hen.  VI.  ii,  i,  27) — a  particular  sense  in  which  it  is  still 
current  in  Scotland.  But  the  word  has  not  yet  dropped  out  of 
English  poetry  :  Shelley's  fragment  (ed.  Rossetti,  1870,  ii,  335) : 
'  Driving  along  a  rack  of  winged  Clouds  ; ' 

Keats  {Hyperion,  Bk.  i,  302) : 

'  And  all  along  a  dismal  rack  of  clouds  ; ' 

and  M .  Arnold  ( Stanzas  in  Memory  of  the  A  uthor  of '  Obermann ')  / 

'  The  autumn  storm-winds  drive  the  rack.' 
The  region  cloud  =  that  overspreading  the  region  or  domain  of  the 
air  ;  as  in  Milton  {Paradise  Lost,  vii,  425) : 

'  Part  loosely  wing  the  region.' 
Observe  the  coincidence  of  the  words  '  region '  and  '  rack '  in  close 
proximity  in  Bacon  and  Shakspeare,  as  quoted  above.  Prof.  Holmes 
might  have  included  it  in  his  chapter  of  parallelisms  {Authorship  of 
Shakespeare.  New  York  :  1866).  j^am  is  a  neuter  verb  here.  With 
Shakspeare's  sonnet  may  be  compared  Wordsworth's,  beginning 
'  Who  but  is  pleased  to  watch  the  moon  on  high.' 

34 — Lxvi.  canker-blooms  =  dog  or  hedge-roses,  which,  beautiful  as 
they  are,  yet  lack  the  rich  perfume  of  the  damask  roses,  and  can- 
not therefore  like  these  be  used  for  the  purpose  of  distilling.  6. 
Cp.  Barnabe  Barnes  ( The  Devil's  Charter,  1607,  quoted  by  Dr. 
Grosart,  Intro,  to  the  Poems,  1875,  p.  xxxvi)  who  has  as  constant 
and  loving  references  to  roses  as  Shakspeare  himself  : 

'  Lticretia.   I  must  delay  this  colour  ;  is  it  carnation  right? 
Motticilla.  Oh,  the  true  tincture  of  a  damask  i^ose.' 

unrespected  =  unregarded.     So  B.  GrifHn  {Fidessa,  Son.  37) : 

'Wayling  alone  my  unrespected  love.' 
fade  .  .  .  vade.  One  of  many  examples  of  the  distinction  between 
these  words  may  be  cited  from  R.  Barnfield's  Complaint  of  Chas- 
titie,  1594,  St.  9  : 

'  For  what  are  Pleasures  but  still-vading  joyes  ? 
Fading  as  flowers.' 


Notes  289 

PAGE 

See  also  Dr.  Grosart's  complete  eds.  of  Barnfield,  printed  for  the 
Roxburghe  Club,  1876,  p.  55,  and  John  Davies  of  Hereford,  Chcrtsey 
Worthies'  Liby.,  1878,  Glossarial  Index,  s.  v.  14.  by  :  '  my  '  (Malone). 
34 — Lxvii,  1-2.  Cp.  Florio,  xxvi,  9-11. 

25 — Lxviii,  13.  7i>i//.  Mr.  Massey  classes  this  sonnet  in  the  Herbert 
series,  and  accordingly  prints  the  word  in  capitals  as  a  proper  name. 
The  quarto  has  '  Will.' 

LXIX,  1-3.    Imitated  by  William  Roscoe  in  his  Sonnet  to  Dr. 
Currie  {Poetical  Works,  Liverpool,  1853,  p.  92)  : 

'  As,  on  the  margin  of  the  breezy  shore, 
Waves  after  waves  successive  rise  and  die. 
Thus  pass  the  transient  race  of  human  kind.' 

5.  '  When  a  star  has  risen  and  entered  on  the  full  stream  of  light.' — 
F.  T.  Palgrave.  6.  Formerly,  periods  of  eclipse,  especially  of  the 
moon,  were  held  to  be  peculiarly  unpropitious  for  the  conception  or 
execution  of  lawful,  and  favourable  to  evil  enterprises  ;  hence 
^crooked  eclipses.'  So  Milton  of  the  ill-fated  ship  in  which  his 
friend  was  lost  {Lycidas,  100)  : 

'  It  was  that  fatal  and  perfidious  bark, 
Built  in  th'  eclipse,  and  rigg'd  with  curses  dark, 
That  sunk  so  low  that  sacred  head  of  thine.' 

parallels.  Cp.  the  beginning  of  the  2nd  Sonnet : 

'  When  fortie  Winters  shall  beseige  thy  brow. 
And  digge  deep  trenches  in  thy  beauties  field.' 

times  in  hope  =  the  future,  the  '  age  unbred  '  (xci,  13,  p.  46),  times 
as  yet  only  in  promise,  as  in  Lxxxvii,  10  (p.  44)  '  hope  of  orphans,' 
&c.,  in  the  sense  oi  promise  of  orphans,  &c. 
36 — Lxx,  7.  According  to  the  theory  enunciated  by  Mr.  Fleay  (foot- 
note, supra,  p.  279),  the  '  shame '  which  Shakspeare  so  often  speaks 
of  as  attaching  to  him  is  '  nothing  more  than  the  feeling  produced 
by  unfavourable  critical  opinions  concerning  his  productions  ;  such, 
for  instance,  as  that  the  Romeo  and  Juliet  or  Richard  //was  inferior 
to  the  contemporaneous  poem  of  Venus  and  Adonis,  or  that  the 
Lucrece  was  far  superior  in  kind  and  quality  to  the  dramatic  works 
that  succeeded  it,  probably  Richard  III,  if  not  the  refashioned 
Henry  VI.  .  .  .  We  must  remember  that  Shakspere's  poems  were 
for  a  considerable  time  thought  superior  to  his  plays.'  Mr.  Fleay 
thus  explains  the  'idle  hours' : — '  In  the  Epistle  to  Henry  Wriothesley, 
Earl  of  Southampton,  prefixed  to  the  Venus  and  Adonis,  Shakspere 
says  :  "  I  vow  to  take  advantage  of  all  idle  hours  till  I  have  honoured 
you  with  some  graver  labour  ;  "  and  in  the  similar  document  pre- 
fixed to  the  Rape  of  Lucrece,  he  says  :  ' '  What  I  have  done  is  yours  " 
T 


290 


Notes 


PAGE 


(that  is,  the  two  poems  just  mentioned)  ;  "what  I  have  to  do  is 
yours  :  being  part-  in  all  I  have,  devoted  yours."  And  he  never 
dedicated  any  work  to  any  other  person.  Hence  Southampton  was 
the  only  person  who  had  a  right  to  have  any  ' '  jealousy  "  as  to  Shak- 
spere's  idleness  :  to  "  pry  into  his  deeds, "  to  "  find  out  in  him  shames 
and  idle  hours."  Shakspere  had  promised  him  another  poem,  and 
had  not  fulfilled  his  promise  ;  he  had  been  writing  for  the  theatre 
instead.'  8.  tenour  (Malone) :  quarto  '  tenure  '. 
36 — LXXi.  Observe  that  there  is  no  grammatical  subject,  or  nomina- 
tive, here  ;  the  predicate  being  extended  to  such  a  length  (11.  1-8)  as 
to  necessitate  a  fresh  presentment  of  the  thought  with-1.  9.  Failing 
to  analyse  the  sonnet  correctly,  Mr.  Bulloch  {Stttdies  on  the  Text  of 
Shakespeare:  Aberdeen,  1878)  has  been  tempted  into  the  fatal 
'  emendation  '  of  '  Aghast'  for  Against  in  1.  i. 
37 — LXXii,  5-7.  The  author  of  7>/7;;)w«2a«a  matches  this  passage  with 
In  Memoriam,  cxxiii : 

'  There  rolls  the  deep  where  grew  the  tree. 
O  earth,  what  changes  hast  thou  seen  ! 
There  where  the  long  street  roars,  hath  been 
The  stillness  of  the  central  sea.' 
Drummond  finely  amplifies  the  thought  in  sonnet-form  {Flowres  of 
Sion,  ed,  1630,  p.  23) : 

EARTH,  AND  ALL   ON  IT,   CHANGEABLE. 
That  space  where  raging  Waves  doe  now  divide 
From  the  great  Continent  our  happie  Isle, 
Was  some-time  Land  ;  and  where  tall  Shippes  doe  glide, 
Once  with  deare  Arte  the  crooked  Plough  did  tyle  : 
Once  those  faire  Bounds  stretcht  out  so  farre  and  wide. 
Where  Townes,  no.  Shires  enwall'd,  endeare.each  mile, 
Were  all  ignoble  Sea  and  marish  vile. 
Where  Proteus  Flockes  danc'd  measures  to  the  Tyde. 
So  Age,  transforming  all,  still  forward  runncs  ; 
No  wonder  though  the  Earth  doth  change  her  face  ! 
New  Manners,  Pleasures  new,  turne  with  new  Sunnes, 
Lockes  now  like  Gold  grow  to  an  hoarie  grace  : 
Nay,  Mindes  rare  shape  doth  change,  that  lyes  despis'd, 
Which  was  so  deare  of  late,  and  highlie  pris'd. 

Williain  Drummond} 

Cp.  Shakspeare  again,  2  Hen.  IV,  iii,  i,  45-51  ;  John  Davies  of 
Hereford  {The  Muses  Saaifce,  1612,  ed.  Grosart,  ii,  51)  : 
'  Now  swels  the  Sea,  wliere  erst  faire  Cities  stood  ; 

So,  where  Men  walkt,  now  huge  Sea-monsters  swim  : 
And,  where  the  Earth  was  cover'd  with  her  Floud, 

Now  Citties  stand,  unneere  the  Oceans  Brim/ ^ 

1  deare  Arte  the  crooked  :  '  laborious  Art  the'  (1623). 


Notes  291 

PAGE 

and  Mr.  Swinburne's  Erectkeus,  1876,  33  : 

'  But  now 
Would  this  day's  ebb  of  their  spent  wave  of  strife 
Sweep  it  to  sea,  wash  it  on  wreck,  and  leave 
A  costless  thing  contemned  ;  and  in  our  stead, 
Where  these  walls  were  and  sounding  streets  of  men, 
Make  wide  a  waste  for  tongueless  water-herds 
And  spoil  of  ravening  fishes  ;  that  no  more. 
Sliould  men  say.  Here  was  Athens.' 

37 — LXXIII.     Observe  the  ellipsis  of  tke>-e  is  neither  after  '  Since  '  in 

1.   I  ;    for  other  instances  of  which  see  Abbott's  Shakespearian 

Grammar,  §  403.      Times  chest :  in  which  he  is  feigned  to  conceal 

"his  treasures.     So  Ulysses  {Troi/us  anct  Cressida,  iii,  3,  145) : 

'  Time  hath,  my  lord,  a  wallet  at  his  back, 
Wherein  he  puts  alms  for  oblivion.' 

Leigh   Hunt  varies  the  metaphor  in  his  pretty  rondeau,  "Jenny 

kiss'd  me  : 

'  Time,  you  thief,  who  love  to  get 

Sweets  into  your  list,  put  that  in.' 

38 — LXXIV,  II.     Cp.  Spenser  {Colin  Clouts  come  home  againe,  1595, 
sig.  D  3)  :  _ 

'  Whiles  single  Truth  and  simple  honestie 
Do  wander  up  and  downe  despys'd  of  all.' 

The  anomalies  enumerated  in  this  sonnet  (which  should  be  compared 
with  the  great  soliloquy  in  the  3rd  act  of //aw/^/)  are  unhappily  too 
common  to  require  illustration  by  specific  examples  ;  yet  it  may  be 
remarked  how  appositely  Prof.  Lowell  applies  11.  8-9  to  the  case  of 
Keats  and  his  critics,  and  1.  11  to  Wordsworth's.  {Among My  Books, 
2nd  Series,  as  before,  p.  312).  Mr.  Hales,  quoting  the  sonnet  in 
his  Introduction  to  the  Clarendon  Pressed. of  MWion's  A reopagitica, 
1874,  says  :  '  Not  other  are  the  visions  Milton  sees  in  his  Areopa- 
gitica  : — "  What  is  it  but  a  servitude,  like  that  imposed  by  the 
Philistines,  not  to  be  allowed  the  sharpening  of  our  own  axes  and 
coulters,  but  we  must  repair  from  all  quarters  to  twenty  licensing 
forges  ?  .  .  .  What  advantage  is  it  to  be  a  man  over  it  is  to  be  a 
boy  at  school,  if  we  have  only  scapt  the  ferular  to  come  under  the 
fescue  of  an  imprimatur  ?"  But  these  things  do  not  "tire  "  and  dis- 
hearten Milton.  Rather  they  inflame  him  with  a  noble  rage.' 
37-38 — Lxxii-Lxxiv.  '  These  three  sonnets  form  one  poem  of  mar- 
vellous power,  insight,  and  beauty.' — F.  T.  Palgrave. 
38 — Lxxv.  suspect  =  suspicion — as  in  the  Hamburg  pseudo-Shak- 
spearian  poem  (Collier's  New  Particulars,  &.C.,  1836,  p.  66;  or, 
Memoir  of  T.  L.  Beddoes,  prefixed  to  Poems,  1851,  p.  Ixx)  : 
'  And  love  is  sweetest,  seasoned  with  suspect.' 


292  Notes 

PAGE 

There  seems  to  be  something  of  the  sentiment  as  well  as  of  the 
phraseology  of  this  sonnet  in  the  following  passage  from  Humfrey 
Gifford's  Fosie  of  Gillojlowers  (1580),  ed.  Grosart,  1875,  p.  40:  'I 
coulde  heere  bring  to  your  memorie,  with  how  many  hatred[s]  and 
enimities  *he  worldly  promotions  are  invironed,  so  that  nothing  is 
sure  in  them,  nothing  without  suspect,'  &c.  {An  Epistle  of  Claudius 
Ptholomwus  dj'c.  englished  by  N.  G.).  6.  Thy  (Capell  MS.) :  quarto 
'Their',  being  wooed  of  Time  :  that  is, unless  I  wholly  misapprehend 
the  phrase  (of  which,  observe,  the  subject  is  thou  understood,  not 
'  worth  '  as  Malone,  or  '  slander '  as  Steevens  misjudged)  =  being 
still  in  the  season  of  youth,  passing  through  that  time  of  life  in 
which  the  allurements  {wooings)  to  evil  are  strongest : — 

'  For  canker  vice  the  sweetest  buds  doth  love.' 

For  Time  the  late  Mr.  Staunton  (Unsuspected  Corruptions  of  Shak- 

speare's  Text :  Athenaum,  Jan.  31,  1874)  proposed  to  read  *  crime,' 

and  strengthened  his  conjecture  (possibly  suggested  by  Malone's 

*  void  of  crime ')  by  pointing  to  the  144th  Sonnet,  which  he  believed 

to  have  some  affinity  with  this  70th,  particularly  in  the  lines  : 

'  To  win  me  soon  to  hell,  my  female  evil 
Tempteth  my  better  angel  from  my  side, 
And  would  corrupt  my  saint  to  be  a  devil, 
Wooing  his  purity  with  her  foul  pride.' ' 

kingdoms  of  hearts.  Cp.  the  '  worldes  of  harts  '  of  B.  Barnes's  sonnet 
under  cii  (p.  300),  and  H.  Constable's  Diana,  Son.  27  : 

'  Thou  of  a  world  of  hearts  in  time  shalt  be 
A  monarch  great  ;  ' 

of  which  Shakspeare's  phrase  was  possibly  a  reminiscence,    owe  = 
own. 
39— Lxxvi.     Cp.  Miss  Rossetti's  fine  sonnet  {Poems,  1875,  p.  105) : 

REMEMBER. 

Remember  me  when  I  am  gone  away. 

Gone  far  away  into  the  silent  land  ; 

When  you  can  no  more  hold  me  by  the  hand. 

Nor  I  half  turn  to  go  yet  turning  stay. 

Remember  me  when  no  more  day  by  day 

You  tell  me  of  our  future  that  you  planned  : 

Only  remember  me  ;  you  understand 

It  will  be  late  to  counsel  then  or  pray. 

'  Cp.  Drayton  (Idea,  Son.  20)  : 

'  An  evill  spirit  your  beautie  haunts  Me  still, 
Wherewith  (alas)  I  have  beene  long  possest. 
Which  ceaseth  not  to  tempt  Me  unto  111, 
Nor  gives  Me  once  hut  one  poore  minutes  rest.' 


Notes  293 

PAGE 

Yet  if  you  should  forget  me  for  a  while 
And  afterwards  remember,  do  not  grieve  : 
For  if  the  darkness  and  corruption  leave 
A  vestige  of  the  thoughts  that  once  I  had, 
Better  by  far  you  should  forget  and  smile 
Than  that  you  should  remember  and  be  sad. 

Christina  G.  A^ossef/i. 
39— Lxxvii.  '  How  exquisitely  worthy  of  him  who  told  of  Macbeth's 
"  way  of  life,  fallen  into  the  sere  and  yellow  leaf,"  is  such  a  sonnet 
as  this  !  '—Henry  Reed.  LI.  5-8  recall  an  unpublished  sonnet  by 
a  young  living  poet  in  which  similar  imagery  is  employed  with 
equal  naturalness  and  beauty.     It  is  entitled 

VANISHINGS. 
As  one  whose  eyes  have  watched  the  stricken  day 
Swoon  to  its  crimson  death  adown  the  sea, 
Turning  his  face  to  eastward  suddenly 
Sees  a  lack-lustre  M'orld  all  cliill  and  gray, — 
Then,  wandering  sunless  whitherso  he  may. 
Feels  the  first  dubious  dumb  obscurity, 
And  vague  foregloomings  of  the  Dark  to  be, 
Close  like  a  sadness  round  his  glimmering  way  • 
So  I  from  drifting  dreambound  on  and  on 
About  strange  isles  of  utter  bliss,  in  seas 
Whose  waves  are  unimagined  melodies, 
Rose  and  beheld  the  dreamless  world  anew  : 
Sad  were  the  fields,  and  dim  with  splendours  gone 
The  strait  sky-glimpses  fugitive  and  few. 

William  Watson. 

40 — LXXVII.  consecrate.  For  a  list  of  verbs  which,  ending  in  te,  t,  and 
d,  do  not  take  ed  in  the  participle,  see  Abbott's  Shakespearian 
Grammar,  §  342.  A  modem  instance  occurs  in  Shelley's  sonnet 
To  Wordstvorth  given  under  CCLXXii : 

'  Songs  consecrate  to  truth  and  liberty.' 

With  1.  10  cp.  cv,  7  ;  and  with  11,  Lxxi,  9-12. 

LXXIX.  a  noted  weed  =  a  familiar  dress.     The  sonnet  breaks  a 
sequence  observable  in  the  three  preceding  and  the  one  succeeding 
it  in  the  text.     It  should  be  read  with  Sonnets  105  (xcii,  p.  47) 
and  108,  in  which  the  poet  falls  back  into  the  same  strain. 
41 — LXXX,  1-8.   The  following  sonnet  affords  an  interesting  comment 
on  this  and  other  passages  in  Shakspeare's  writings  from  which  it 
has  sometimes  been  supposed  that  he  was  unconscious  of  the  im- 
mortality that   awaited   him.      {Dublin    University  Review  and 
Quarterly  Magazine,  January,  1833)  : — 
SHAKSPEARE. 
Who  says  that  Shakspeare  did  not  know  his  lot, 
But  deem'd  that  in  time's  manifold  decay 


294 


Notes 


His  memory  should  die  and  pass  away, 

And  that  within  the  shrine  of  human  thought 

To  him  no  altar  should  be'rear'd  ?     O  hush  ! 

O  veil  thyself  awhile  in  solemn  awe  ! 

Nor  dream  that  all  man's  mighty  spirit-law 

Thou  know'st ;  how  all  the  hidden  fountains  gush 

Of  the  soul's  silent  prophesying  power. 

For  as  deep  Love,  'mid  all  its  wayward  pain. 

Cannot  believe  but  it  is  loved  again. 

Even  so  strong  Genius,  with  its  ample  dower 

Of  a  world-grasping  love,  from  that  deep  feeling 

Wins  of  its  own  wide  sway  the  clear  revealing. 

Sir  Win.  K.  Hainilton. 

lo.  The  author  of  Tennysoniana  notes  the  parallel  in  In  Memonam 

(Conclusion) : 

'  Which  shall  be  read 
By  village  eyes  as  yet  unborn.' 

It  may  here  be  remarked  that  throughout  the  Sonnets  there  are 
evidences  of  Shakspeare's  having  read  those  in  which,  as  Meres 
describes  them,  '  Daniel  hath  divinely  sonetted  the  matchlesse 
beauty  of  his  Delia.''  Through  this  Lxxx,  for  example,  he  can  be 
pretty  clearly  traced  to  the  41st  and  52nd  of  that  collection,  the 
latter  of  which  may  find  a  place  here  for  comparison,  notwith- 
standing its  somewhat  ungracious  glance  at  '  the  poets'  poet,' 
whose  Faerie  Queeiie  was  then  a  new  book.  ( Whole  Workes  in 
Foetrie,  as  before,  1623) : — 

Let  others  sing  of  Knights  and  Palladines 

In  aged  accents  and  untimely  words, 

Paint  shadowes  in  imaginary  lines. 

Which  well  the  reach  of  their  high  wits  records  ; 

But  I  must  sing  of  thee  and  those  faire  eies 

Autentique  shall  my  verse  in  time  to  come. 

When  yet  th'  unborne,  shall  say,  Lo  where  she  lies 

Whose  beauty  made  him  speake  that  else  was  dombe. 

These  are  the  Arkes,  the  Trophies  I  erect. 

That  fortifie  thy  name  against  old  age  ; 

And  these  thy  sacred  vertues  must  protect 

Against  the  darke  and  times  consuming  rage. 

Though  th'  error  of  my  youth  in  them  appeare. 

Suffice  they  shew  I  liv'd,  and  lov'd  thee  deare. 

Samuel  Daniel. 

Cp.  also  Drayton's  Idea,  Son.  44.  Hartley  Coleridge  {Essays  and 
Marginalia,  1851,  i,  123)  on  quoting  the  sonnet  under  notice,  ex- 
claims :  '  Alas  !  the  greatest  poets  are  but  indifferent  prophets  after 
all,  and  often  fail  in  securing  the  immortality  o.f  their  subjects,  even 
•while  they  achieve  their  own.'     According  to  a  learned  theory  of 


Notes  •  295 

PAfiE 

the  Sonnets,  however,  in  which  it  is  sought  to  prove  that  they  and 
the  principal  contemporaneous  sonnet-systems  were  written  in 
conformity  to  the  recondite  love-philosophy  of  the  schools,  such 
sentiments  as  those  in  the  text  merely  express  a  step  in  the  scala 
anioris.  I  refer  to  the  late  Richard  Simpson's  Philosophy  of  Shake- 
speare s  Sonnets,  1868,  of  which,  in  this  connexion,  see  page  50. 
41 — LXXXI.  dcteriniiiate :  alegal  word  applied  to  a  bond.  3-4.  The  legal 
style  recalls  Barnes  again  {Partheitophil and  Farthcnophe,  Son.  15)  : 

'  So  shalt  thou  pawne  to  me  signe  for  a  signe 
Of  thy  sweete  conscience,  when  I  shall  resigne 
Thy  loves  large  Charter,  and  thy  bondes  againe.' 

upoji  misprision  growing  =  given  unadvisedly,  unintentionally,  or 

in  error.     The  author  of   Tennysoniana  places  this  sonnet  over 

against  the  62nd  section  of  In  Memotiam  ('  Tho'  if  an  eye,'  &c.), 

and  notes  as  remarkable  that  the  last  stanza  of  the  immediately 

preceding  section  closes  with  Shakspeare's  name.     13-14.   Cp. 

Cymbelinc,  v,  4,  123-9. 

43 — LXXXV,  5-10.   Cp.  In  Mernoriam,  cxi,  2,  5. — {Tennysoniatia). 

44 — Lxxx\'i.  base  .  .  .  basest.  For  base,  Staunton,  suspecting  that 
it  had  been  caught  from  basest,  would  read  'foul';  while  Sidney 
Walker  suggests  '  barest '  for  basest.  14.  This  entire  line,  and  the 
•  expression  '  basest  weed  '  as  well,  occur  in  The  Raigne  of  King 
Edward  the  Third,  ii,  I — a  play  first  published  in  1596,  included 
by  Capcll  in  his  Prolusions  (1760)  as  probably  Shakspeare's,  and 
recently  re -claimed  for  him,  wholly  or  in  part,  by  Mr.  Collier,  Mr. 
Fleay  and  others.  The  truth  as  to  its  parentage  has  doubtless  been 
found  for  us  by  Mr.  Swinburne  {Gentleman's  Magazine,  August, 
1879),  who  argues  that  the  author  was  some  now  indistinguishable 
'devout  student  and  humble  follower  of  Christopher  Marlowe,' 
Shakspeare,  we  know,  would  borrow  the  master's  words  on  occa- 
sion, no  less  happily  than  tenderly  {As  You  Like  It,  iii,  5,  81) : 
'  Dead  shepherd,  now  I  find  thy  saw  of  might, 
"  Who  ever  loved  that  loved  not  afr  first  sight?  "' 
then  wherefore  not  those  of  so  worthy  a  disciple  when  they  served  ? 
'With  the  tone  of  this  Sonnet  compare  Hamlet's  "Give  me  that 
man  That  is  not  passion's  slave,"  &c.  Shakespeare's  writings 
show  the  deepest  sensitiveness  to  passion  : — hence  the  attraction 
he  felt  in  the  contrasting  effects  of  apathy.' — F.  T.  Palgrave. 

LXXXVII.  One  of  Mr.  Fleay's  propositions  is — 'That  the  "ab- 
sence", the  "journey",  the  "travel"  [see  note  on  LViii,  p.  2S5], 
so  largely  dwelt  on  in  these  compositions,  do  not  refer  to  any  actual 
journey  at  all ;  but  merely  to  the  separation  between  Southampton 
and  Shakspere  caused  by  the  metaphorical  unfaithfulness  of  the 


296  Notes 

William  ^bakspenre. 

PAGE 

latter  to  the  former,  in  producing,  not  poems  dedicated  to  him,  but 
only  dramas  destined  for  the  multitude  instead.'  hope  of  orphans 
—  promise  of,  &c.  (see  note  on  LXix,  13,  p.  289).  Staunton,  fail- 
ing '  to  make  any  good  sense  '  of  this  expression,  asks  if  we  should 
not  read  ^  crop  of  orphans.'  The  emendation  is  surely  needless. 
45 — LXXXVill.  heavy  Saturn  =  '  The  gloomy  side  of  Nature  ;  or,  the 
saturnine  spirit  in  life.' — A  T.  Palgrave. 

Lxxxix,  6  =  1  accused  the  lily  of  stealing  its  whiteness  from  thy 
hand.     The  late  Prof.  George  Wilson,  illustrating  from  many  pas- 
sages Shakspeare's  perception  of  the  power  which  odours,  agreeable 
or  disagreeable,  possess  of  exciting  in  us  feelings  of  pain  and  of 
pleasure,  gives  this  sonnet  as  '  the  most  exquisite  of  all ' — '  it  so 
beautifully  weaves  together  the  eye,  the  nostril,  and  the  ear,  each 
as  it  were  like  instruments  in  an  orchestra,  in  turn  playing  the  air, 
and  then  falling  back  into  an  accompaniment,  so  that  now  it  is 
colour  which  is  most  prominent  before  .us,  and  then  smell,  and  then 
sound,  and  thereafter  through  colour  we  return  to  sound  and  frag- 
rance again.'     {The  Five  Gateivays  of  Knowledge,  p.  78,  2nd  ed. 
1857).     It  has  points  of  contact  with  Constable's  sonnet  Of  his 
Mistress  (p.    18),  Spenser's  Amoj-etti,   64,  and  Shakspeare's  own 
2ist  (lv,  with  note  p.  283)  and  130th.     Mr.  Palgrave  observes : 
'  This  Sonnet  contains  fifteen  lines  :  a  variation  which  suggests 
how  the  sonnet-form  might  be  judiciously  expanded.'     The  pre- 
cedent of  Shakspeare  was  probably  recollected  by  Procter,  who 
has  some  unpublished  lines,  evidently  intended  for  a  sonnet,  in 
which  he  avails  himself  of  a  similar  latitude  : — 
TO  JOHN  FORSTER. 
I  do  not  know  a  man  who  better  reads 
Or  weighs  the  great  thoughts  of  the  Book  I  send, — 
Better  than  he  whom  I  have  called  my  friend 
For  twenty  years  and  upwards.      He  who  feeds 
Upon'Shakesperian  pastures  never  needs 
The  humbler  food  which  springs  from  plains  below  ; 
Yet  may  he  love  the  little  flowers  that  blow. 
And  him  excuse  who  for  their  beauty  pleads. 
Take  then  my  Shakespeare  to  some  sylvan  nook  ; 
And  pray  thee,  in  the  name  of  Days  of  Old, 
Good-will  and  Friendship,  never  bought  or  sold, 
Give  me  assurance  thou  wilt  always  look 
With  kindness  still  on  Spirits  of  humbler  mould  ; 
Kept  firm  by  resting  on  that  Wondrous  Book, 
Wherein  the  Dream  of  Life  is  all  unrolled. 

1856.  Bar^y  Cornwall.^ 

*  Inscribed  in  his  autograph  on  the  fly-leaf  of  a  gift-copy  of  the  second  folio 
Shakspeare  (1632),  now  in  the  Forster  Collection  at  South  Kensington. 


Notes  297 


PACE 


Other  instances  of  this  license  are  not  wanting  :  e.g.,  Henry  Sut- 
ton, under  cccxxxi-CCCXXXll,  and  Tennyson's  early  poem,  Love 
and  Death. 
44-45 — LXXXVII-LXXXIX.    These  three  sonnets  form  one  perfect  love- 
poem. 
46 — xc,  8.  her :  quarto  '  his'.  The  late  Mr.  Housman  was  the  first  to 

supply  the  right  word.     (A  Collection  of  English  Sonnets,  1835). 
47 — xcil.  See  remark  under  Lxxix  (supra,  p.  293). 

xciil.   Dr.  Grosart  in  his  reprint  of  Barnes  (Intro,  p.  xvi)  marks 
the  following  passage  (Canzon  i)  as  a  Shakspearian  reminiscence  : 
'  These  papers  .   .  . 
Whose  lasting  Chronicles  shall  time  out-weare  ; ' 

and  indicates  another  in  the  dedicatory  sonnet  to  the  Earl  of 
Northumberland : 

.  .  .   '  your  thrise  noble  house  :  which  shall  out  weare 
Devouring  time  it  selfe,  if  my  poor  muse 
Devine  aright ' — 

which,  it  will  be  noticed,  contains  the  initial  phrase  of  Shakspeare's 
19th  Sonnet.     With  9-10  cp.  Constable's  7th  Sonnet : — 

'  Miracle  of  the  world  !  I  never  will  denye 
That  former  poets  prayse  the  beautie  of  theyre  dayes  ; 
But  all  those  beauties  were  but  figures  of  thy  prayse, 
And  all  those  poets  did  of  thee  but  prophecye.' 

14.  Cp.  Herrick  and  Browning  as  under  xxxi,  pp.  255-6. 

48 — xciv.  subscribes  ^■iwhuvii'i, — as  in  Greene,  XLli,  14.  For  a  startling 
elucidation  of  this  sonnet  see  Mr,  Massey's  work  on  the  Sonnets. 
The  argument  is  that  the  poem  was  Shakspeare's  congratulation  to 
the  Earl  of  Southampton  upon  his  release  from  the  Tower  on  the 
death  of  Elizabeth — the  mortal  Moon  ('  Cynthia  ') — to  which  he  had 
been  committed  for  participation  in  the  Essex  conspiracy. 

XCV,  II.  '  The  word  preposterotisly  admonishes  us  to  read 
'^  sixdiintdi"  ;  preposterous,  in  its  old  and  true  sense,  meaning  a 
deviation  from  the  rational  order  of  procedure,  as  here,  by  giving 
all  for  nothing.  The  misprint  is  probably  due  to  the  appearance 
of  stain  just  above.' — Statmfon. 

49 — xcvi.  blenches  =  deviations.  Apropos  of  this  sonnet,  Henry  Reed 
in  his  essay  on  English  Sonnets  {Lectures,  &c.,  as  before,  ii,  262), 
remarking  on  the  special  uses  to  which  the  sonnet-form  has  been 
put,  observes  :  '  When  Shakspeare  meditated  upon  his  theatrical 
profession,  it  was  in  the  sonnet  that  he  breathed  out  his  sense  of 
degradation  in  that  beautiful  lament,  of  which  the  tone  is  a  little 
louder  than  a  sigh  and  yet  not  so  harsh  as  a  murmur.     It  is  here 


298  ~  Notes 

William  Sljahsparc. 

PAGE 

that  his  genius,  no  longer  embodied  in  its  creations,  appears  to  us  in 
its  individual  nature  ; — he  walks  upon  the  earth  in  his  own  personal 
form.  What  poem  can  boast  of  greater  interest  ?  ' 
4g — xcvil,  6-7.  It  was  doubtless  a  recollection  of  this  characteristi- 
cally Shakspearian  image  (not  to  mention  Paradise  Lost,  iv,  425-6) 
that  gave  form  to  Shelley's  (  The  Cetui,  iii,  i) : 

'  Should  the  offender  live  ? 
Triumph  in  his  misdeed  ?  and  make  by  use 
His  crime,  whate'er  it  is  (dreadful,  no  doubt), 
Thine  element  ?  until  thou  mayst  become 
Utterly  lost,  subdued  even  to  the  hue 
Of  that  which  thou  permittest  ? ' 

Indeed  it  is  somewhat  significant  that  Shelley  (Gamett's  Relics, 
p.  81)  has  'a  note  on  the  original  MS.  of  the  preface'  to  his 
tragedy,  in  which  these  very  words  of  Shakspeare's  are  quoted  from 
memory,  and  which,  though  in  all  likelihood  originally  meant,  as 
Mr.  Forman  presumes,  to  form  part  of  the  passage  in  that  preface 
on  style  in  dramatic  composition,  may  not  be  without  some  bearing 
on  the  note  on  another  passage  in  which  one  conscious  plagiarism 
is  acknov/ledged.  See  Mr.  Forman's  Shelley,  ii,  14-15.  For  other 
imitations  of  Shakspeare  in  The  Ceiui,  see  an  article  by  'J.  B.  B.* 
in  the  (old)  Shakespeare  Society's  Papers,  Vol.  i,  1844,  p.  54. 
10.  eisel  (quarto  '  Eysell ")  =  vinegar.  To  quote  Henry  Reed  again 
{ibid.,  ii,  263)  :  '  This  would  be  sweet  language  from  any  lips  ;  but 
what  can  be  deeper  than  the  pathos  of  it,  when  you  reflect  that  it  is 
the  grief  of  one  whose  wisdom,  for  more  than  two  centuries,  has  been 
reverently  quoted  by  statesmen,  philosophers,  and  divines,  whose 
plots  have  wound  round  so  many  hearts  and  moistened  so  many  eyes, 
whose  pictures  of  passions  have  moved  such  sympathies,  and  whose 
wit  has  gladdened  so  many  faces  ?  It  is  in  his  sonnets  that  you  find 
the  conclusive  proof  that  he  was  "  the  gentle  Shakspeare."  ' 
50 — xcviii.  //  is  the  star:  'Apparently,  whose  stellar  influence  is 
unknown,  although  his  angular  altitude  has  been  determined.' — 
F.  T.  Palgrave.  '  It  would  be  difficult, '  says  Henry  Reed  {Lectures, 
&c.,  as  before,  ii,  253^  '  to  cite  a  finer  passage  of  m^oral  poetry 
than  this  description  of  the  master-passion.  How  true  and  how 
ennobling  to  our  nature  !  We  at  once  recognise  in  it  the  abstrac- 
tion of  that  conception  which  has  found  a  dwelling  and  name  in 
the  familiar  forms  of  Desdemona,  Juliet,  Imogen,  Cordelia, — of 
Romeo,  and  of  Othello  too,  if  that  character  be  correctly  under- 
stood. If  this  sonnet  was  written  before  his  dramas,  then  it  was 
the  pregnant  thought  from  which  were   destined  to  spring  those 


Notes  299 


PAGE 


inimitable  creations  of  female  character  that  have  been  loved,  as  if 
they  were  living  beings,  by  thousands.  If,  as  is  most  probable,  it 
was  written  afterwards,  it  is  Shakspeare's  own  comment,  and  might 
be  prefixed  as  a  most  apposite  motto  to  those  dramas  in  which  he 
has  given  life  and  motion  to  the  conception.' ' 

50 — xcix,  6.  time.     Staunton  would  read  'them'. —  Unsuspected  Cor- 
ruptions, &c.,  Athenoeum,  Jan.  31,  1S74. 

51 — c.  jacks  =  keys  of  the  virginals,  or  spinnet,  the  prototype  of  the 
piano. 

CI,  3-4.  Cp.  Pericles,  i,  i,  137  : 

'  One  sin,  I  know,  another  doth  provoke  ; 
Murder's'  as  near  to  lust  as  flame  to  smoke  : 
Poison  and  treason  are  the  hands  of  sin.' 

In  the  Lecture  before  quoted  (^jide  foot-note  6,  p.  2S1)  Dr.  Trench 
marks  out  this  sonnet  for  special  comment  : — '  The  subject,  the 
bitter  delusion  of  all  sinful  pleasures,  the  reaction  of  a  swift  remorse 
which  inevitably  dogs  them,  Shakespeare  must  have  most  deeply 
felt,  as  he  has  expressed  himself  upon  it  most  profoundly.  I  know- 
no  picture  of  this  at  all  so  terrible  in  its  truth  as  in  The  Rape  of 
Lucrece  the  description  of  Tarquin  after  he  has  successfully  wrought 
his  deed  of  shame.  But  this  sonnet  on  the  same  theme  is  worthy 
to  stand  by  its  side.'  ^ 

52— cii.  Probably  a  reminiscence  of  Sidney's  Astrophel  a>ul  Stella,  7, 
beginning: 

'When  Nature  made  her  chiefe  worke,  Stellas  ej'es. 
In  colour  blacke  why  wrapt  she  beames  so  bright  ? ' 

Indeed  Mr.  Massey  contends  that  -both  poems  were  addresed  to 
one  and  the  same  person — the  illustrious  Stella.  It  is  not  a  little 
remarkable  that  in  a  sonnet  addressed  directly  to  her  by  Barnes, 
whose  sonnets  abound  in  analogies  to  those  of  Shakspeare,  there 
occurs  an  almost  equally  beautiful  characterization  of  the  evening 
&ic!ir  {Part henop  hi  I,  &c..  Son.  95): — 

Thou  bright  beame-spreading  loves  thrise  happy  starre, 

Th'  arcadian  shepheard  Astrophills  cleare  guide  : 

Thou  that  on  swift  wing'd  Pegasus  doest  ride, 

Auroraes  harbenger,  surpassing  farre 

Aurora  caried  in  her  rosie  carre  : 

Bright  Planet,  teller  of  cleare  evening-tide, 

Starre  of  all  starres,  fayre  favor'd  nightes  cheefe  pride 

Which  day  from  night,  and  night  from  day  doest  barre  : 


1  I  am  not  aware  whether  it  has  ever  been  pointed  out  that  in  T/ie  Book  of  the 
Sonnet,  edited  by  Leigh  Hunt  and  S.  Adams  Lee  (2  vols.  Boston  and  London  :  1867), 
this  and  many  other  portions  of  Reed's  admirable  Lectures  appear  as  foot-notes,  with- 
out quotation-marks  or  any  species  of  acknowledgment  whatever. 


300  Notes 

PAGE 

Thou  that  hast  worldes  of  harts  with  thine  eyes  glaunce 

To  thy  loves  pleasing  bondage  taken  thrall  ; 

Behold  where  graces  in  loves  circles  daunce, 

Of  two  cleare  starres,  out-sparkling  Pianettes  all :  ' 

For  starres  her  bewties  arrow-bearers  bee  ; 

Then  be  the  subjectes,  and  superiour  shee. 

Barnabe  Barnes. 

52 — cm.  Cp.  another  version  in  The  Passionate  Pilgrime,  1599, 
adopted  in  the  second  edition  of  the  Sonnets  {Poems  :  IVntten  by 
Wil.  Shakespeare.  Gent.  1640.  l2mo.  sig.  B).  I  avail  myself  of 
this  reference  to  The  Passionate  Pilgrime,  the  surreptitious  char- 
acter of  which  is  well  known,  to  present  the  following  sonnet,  erro- 
neously printed  therein  as  Shakspeare's,  and  frequently  attributed 
to  him  still.  The  real  author  was  Richard  Barnfield,  whose  poems 
have  recently  been  edited  by  Dr.  Grosart  for  the  Roxburghe  Club, 
4to,  1876.  The  sonnet,  given  here  from  that  reprint  (page  189), 
stands  first  among  the  Poems :  In  divers  humors  (1598),  and  is 
not,  as  in  the  old  miscellany,  without  a  heading  : — 

TO  HIS  FRIEND  MAISTER  R.  L.   IN  PRAISE  OF 

MUSIQUE   AND  POETRIE. 

If  Musique  and  sweet  Poetrie  agree, 
*      As  they  must  needes  (the  Sister  and  the  Brother), 
Then  must  the  Love  be  great  twixt  thee  and  mee, 
Because  thou  lov'st  the  one,  and  I  the  other. 
Dowland  to  thee  is  deare,  whose  heavenly  tuch 
Upon  the  Lute  doeth  ravish  humaine  sense  ; 
Spenser  to  mee,  whose  deepe  Conceit  is  such 
As,  passing  all  Conceit,  needs  no  defence. 
Thou  lov'st  to  heare  the  sweete  melodious  sound 
That  Phoibus  Lute  (the   Queene  of  Musique)  makes ; 
And  I  in  deepe  Delight  am  chiefly  drownd. 
When  as  himselfe  to  singing  he  betakes. 
One  God  is  God  of  Both  (as  Poets  faigne), 
One  Knight  loves  Both,  and  Both  in  thee  remaine. 

Richard  Barnfield. ' 

53 — CIV,  14.  Cp.  Barnes  {Parthenophil,  &c..  Son.  87) : 

'  And  kill  me  with  thy  lookes,  if  they  would  kill.' 
cv,  T-2.  The  quarto  has  : 

'  Poore  soule  the  center  of  my  sinfull  earth. 
My  sinfull  earth  these  rebbell  powres  that  thee  array.* 

1  Maister  R.  L.  =  ^  Probably  Richard  Linch  or  Lynch,  whose  "  Diella  :  certaine 
Sonnets"  (1596)  deserves  revival.' — Grosart.  Dr.  Grosart  has  since  performed  this 
task  himself  (t  vol.  4to,  1877).  Do7tiland —  '■io'hn  Dowland.  whose  "P.ookes"  of 
"  Songs  or  Ayres,"  1597  onward,  are  still  renowned.' — G.  Onr  Kniglit.  '  One  longs  to 
know  who  he  was.' — G.  The  sonnet  shoidd  be  compared  with  Milton's  to  H.  Lawes 
(CXLIII,  p.  72),  and  those  on  modern  composers  given  under  it  in  the  Notes. 


Notes 


\o\ 


For  the  repeated  phrase  (evidently  a  printer's  blunder)  Malone  pro- 
posed to  read  in  1.  2  Fool'd  by  those,  and  Steevens  Starvd  by  the. 
Others  have  since  suggested  Thrall  to  these.  Slave  to  these,  FoiTdby 
these.  Hemmed  with  these, — the  last  the  proposal  of  Mr.  Furnivall 
(^Academy,  Sept.  11,  1875),  who  quotes  Femts  and  Adonis,  1022, 
for  the  expression  : 

'  Fie,  fie,  fond  love,  thou  art  so  full  of  fear 
As  one  with  treasure  lad&n,  hemm'd  with  thieves  ; ' 

while  Mr.  Massey,  simply  by  the  excision  of  the  words  that  thee, 
considers  that  he  has  restored  the  true  reading,  '  without  losing  the 
added  touch  of  solemnity  that  is  given,  and  obviously  intended,  by 
the  repetition  of  my  sinful  earth.'  The  correction  of  Mr.  Bulloch 
of  Aberdeen  ought  also  to  be  noted  {Studies  on  the  Text  of  Shake- 
spare,  1878,  p.  294) :  which  consists  in  the  substitution  of  the  single 
word  '  sins  '  for  the  second  sin  full  earth,  thus  putting  1.  2  in  appo- 
sition to  1.  I.  I  follow  Malone  as  amended  by  Dyce.  7.  Cp. 
Lxxviii,  10.  aggravate  —  augment,  increase.  14.  Cp.  Donne,  cxi, 
14  (with  note).  An  anonymous  sonnet  printed  by  Joseph  Hunter 
has  a  special  interest  in  this  connexion  {N'ew  Illustrations,  &c.,  as 
before,  i,  113) :  '  There  is  in  the  church  of  Abington  a  regular  son- 
net which  appears  to  me  of  great  beauty,  so  that  it  might  almost  be 
attributed  to  Milton,  which  I  will  cite  for  the  double  purpose  of 
drawing  it  forth  from  its  obscurity,  and  for  the  illustration  it  affords 
of  the  character  of  Sir  John  Bernard's  mother,'  on  whose  tomb  it 

is  inscribed ' — 

SCIO    CUI   CREDIDI. 
Earth  unto  Earth  is  now  returned  :  a  doom 
Long  since  decreed  ;  yet  what  was  more  divine 
In  me — my  purer  soul — this  narrow  room 
Nor  can,  nor  must  this  hollow  vault  confine. 
Only  to  God  that  gave  't  I  that  resign. 
Reposing  here  my  Dust,  whose  smallest  grain 
Even  He  that  bought  it  will  revive  again. 
How  long  and  when  shall  that  blest  union  be, 
And  I  enjoy  that  I  do  most  aspire. 
Most  sure  it  is  ;  and  I  will  wait  to  see 
Performed  that  promise,  nor  will  I  inquire  : 
Death  cannot  rob  or  frustrate  my  desire. 
Eternal  life  will  come  with  Christ  mine  Head  ; 
Nor  can  I  then  but  live  that  now  am  dead.  ' 

Anon. 

'  This  lady  died  in  1634.  Her  son.  Sir  John  Bernard,  became,  in  1640,  the  husband 
of  Elizabeth  Hall,  Shakspeare's  granddaughter  and  last  surviving  descendant.  Lady 
Bernard  had  no  issue,  and  on  her  death  in  1670  '  there  was,'  as  Hunter  remarks,  '  an 
utter  extinction  of  the  progeny  of  William  Shakespeare,  which  thus  endured  only 
fifty-four  years  after  his  decease.' 


302 


Notes 


©tillinm  ^Ijalispcarc. 


Shakspeare's  sonnet  should  be  compared  with  Sidney's  '  Leave  me, 

O   Love  '  (xxxill,    p.    17),  Barnes's  Divine  Centurie,  49  and  97, 

Griffin's  Fidessa,  27  and  29,  and  others  presenting  the  same  spiritual 

attitude  ;  as,  for  example,  the  two  following  :  Davies  of  Hereford 

(^Wittes  Pilgrimage,  Son.  13,  sig.  K  i) : 

Whiles  in  my  Soule  I  feel  the  soft  warme  Hand 

Of  Grace,  to  thaw  the  Frozen  dregs  of  Sin, 

She,  Angell  (arm'd,)  on  Edens  Walls  doth  stand 

To  keep  out  outward  Joyes  that  would  come  in : 

But,  when  that  holy  Hand  is  tane  away. 

And  that  my  Soult  congealeth  (as  before), 

She  outward  Comfous  seeks  (with  Care)  each  way, 

And  runs  to  meete  them  at  each  Sences  Doore. 

Yet  they  but  at  the  iirst  sight  only  please  ; 

Then  shrink,  or  breed  abhor'd  Satiety  : 

But  divine  Comforts  (far  unlike  to  These) 

Do  please  the  more,  the  more  they  stay,  and  Be  : 

Then,  outward  Joyes  I  inwardly  detest, 

Sith  they  stay  not,  or  stay  but  in  unrest. 

yolin  Davies.^ 

and  Nicholas  Breton  (7"^^  Souks  Harmony,  1602,  ed.  Grosart,  1876, 

P-  5) : 

The  worldly  prince  doeth  in  his  Septer  hold 

A  kind  of  heaven  in  his  authorities  : 

The  wealthy  miser,  in  his  masse  of  gold, 

Makes  to  his  soule  a  kind  of  Paradice  : 

The  Epicure  that  eates  and  drinkes  all  day. 

Accounts  no  Heaven,  but  in  his  hellish  rowtes  : 

And  she,  whose  beauty  seemes  a  sunny  day. 

Makes  up  her  heaven  but  in  her  babies  clowtes. 

But  my  sweete  God,  I  seeke  no  Princes  power, 

No  misers  wealth,  nor  beauties  fading  glosse  ; 

Which  pamper  sin,  whose  sweetes  are  inward  sowre, 

And  sorry  gaynes,  that  breed  the  spirits  losse. 

No,  my  deare  Lord,  let  my  Heaven  onely  bee 

In  my  Loves  service,  but  to  live  to  thee. 

Nicholas  Breton.'^ 

54 — cvi.  censures  =  judges.  8.  So  punctuated  by  Dyce  and  the  '  Globe' 

editors  (Lettsom's  conjecture) — "  taking  eye  as  a  pun  on  'Ay'" 

(for  an  instance  of  which   practice    see  the  close  of  Son.  100, 

Barnes's  Parthenophil,  &c.).     The  usual  reading,  in  agreement 

* 

with  the  quarto,  is 

'  Love's  eye  is  not  so  true  as  all  men's  :  no. 
How  can  it  ? '  &c. 

'  Cp.  Shelley  (Adonais,  xl)  : 

'  And  that  unrest  which  men  miscall  delight.' 
"  babies  dozuies  —  childish  clothes. 


Notes  303 


PAGE 


of  which,  as  Sidney  Walker  observes  (CrzV.  Exam.,  iii,  368),  'the 
flow  seems  not  to  be  Shakesperian.' 
26-54— L-cvi.  From  Shake-Speares  Sonnets.  Never  before  Imprinted. 
1609.  In  addition  to  those  particularized,  I  have  silently  adopted 
a  few  corrections  by  Malone,  Sewell,  and  others,  where  the  old 
copy  was  palpably  corrupt. 

loljit  gables  flf  |)crrforb. 
54— cvii.  From  Wittes  Pilgrimage,  {by  Poeticall  Essaies)  Through  a 
World  of  amorous  Sonnets,  Soule-passions,  and  other  Passages, 
Divine,  Philosophcall,  Mo7-all,  Poeticall,  and  Politicall.  n.d.  (Son. 
30,  sig.  Li,  Grenville  copy).  Davies's  '  Complete  Works '  have  just 
been  '  for  the  first  time  collected  and  edited '  by  Dr.  Grosart 
{Chertsey  Worthies'  Li  by.,  2  vols.,  1878),  who  in  his  Memorial- 
Introduction  (p.  xviii)  justly  characterizes  the  present  sonnet  as 
'  noble,  almost  Shakespearean-ringing  lines.'  « 

55 — cviii.  Now  that  Barnes's  secular  poems  are  removed  from  the 
category  of  unattainable  things,  and  a  study  of  them  becomes 
practicable,  Dr.  Grosart  having  recently  (1875)  reprinted  and  edited, 
from  the  unique  exemplar  in  the  possession  of  the  Duke  of  Devon- 
shire at  Chatsworth,  the  long-hidden  and  all  but  unheard-of  Par- 
thenophil  and  Parthenophe  {\^()fj,  there  can  be  little  doubt  that 
this  fine  old  singer,  hitherto  so  strangely  neglected,  and  known  only 
to  the  few  by  his  later  Divine  Centtirie  (also  reprinted  by  Dr. 
Grosart)  as  a  minor  but  sweet  and  fervid  voice  in  England's  antiphon, 
is  at  length  on  the  eve  of  having  justice  rendered  him.  It  may 
be  predicted  with  some  confidence  that  it  is  on  the  recovered  treas- 
ure that  Barnes's  fame  will  henceforth  mainly  rest.  The  Sonnets, 
of  which  it  largely  consists,  are  of  special  importance  in  a  study  of 
the  development  of  that  species  of  composition  in  our  literature. 
Apart  from  their  essential  poetical  qualities,  which,  though  consid- 
erable and  undoubted,  are  surpassed  by  those  of  the  Odes  and  Mad- 
rigals, with  their  passionate  adoration  of  beauty,  their  sensuous  de- 
light, their  glories  of  pure  and  lovely  colour,  and  fragrance  of  choice 
flowers,  they  entitle  Barnes  to  rank  as  one  of  the  most  artistic  son- 
neteers of  Elizabeth's  reign  ;  for  while  on  every  side  the  sonnet- 
form  was  deteriorating,  we  find  this  poet  habitually,  though  not 
invariably,  employing  in  the  service  of  his  Parthenophe  a  stanza  as 
obedient  to  technical  prescription — the  inevitable  riming  couplet  of 
the  period  always  excepted — as  those  in  which  Laura's  name  is  laid 


304  Notes 

up  for  ever,  or  those  Mr.  Rossetti  has  given  us  towards  The  House 
of  Life.  The  Parthenophil  and  PartheiiopJie  has  therefore  a  two- 
fold claim  on  the  attention  of  the  literary  historian  ;  and  the  ulti- 
mate verdict  will  probably  confirm  that  of  Professor  Dowden.who 
{Academy,  2nd  September,  1876)  congratulates  Dr.  Grosart  on 
having  brought  into  notice  '  a  volume  of  Renaissance  poetry  far 
more  a  work  of  genius  than  the' EHaro/iTtaOia  of  Watson,  or  Con- 
stable's sonnets.'  An  additional  interest  attaches  to  this  important 
reproduction  from  the  circumstance,  which  no  one  with  any  percep- 
tion of  analogies  will  doubt,  that  it  was  probably  studied  by  Shak- 
speare,  and  not  infrequently  in  his  thoughts  when  writing  the 
immortal  Sonnets  given  to  the  world  sixteen  years  later.  This 
conjecture  is  founded,  not  on  a  few  superficial  resemblances  observ- 
able between  the  two  collections,  but  on  a  striking  community  of 
sentiment  and  mood,  together  with  numerous  verbal  coincidences 
of  which  even  those  falling  in  our  way  are  not  easily  explicable  on 
any  hypothesis  but  that  the  one  writer  was  read  by  the  other.  Of 
course  it  may  reasonably  enough  be  contended  that  since,  as  we 
saw  on  page  279,  Shakspeare's  Sonnets  had  a  limited  circulation 
long  before  they  came  into  print,  Barnes  may  have  been  the  reader, 
and  Shakspeare,  as  usual,  the  read  ;  but  until  an  earlier  date  than 
that  of  the  Parthenophil  and  Partheuophe  can  be  made  out  for  that 
circulation,  and  some  species  of  evidence  transpires  linking  Barnes 
with  the  coterie  of  '  private  friends '  whose  eyes  were  blessed  with 
a  sight  of  the  'sugred  Sonnets'  in  MS.,  we  must  disclaim  that  as- 
sumption, and  abide  by  the  respective  dates  of  publication  as  set- 
tling the  point.  To  the  sensitive  ear  even  subtler  analogies  than 
thdse  we  have  marked  will  be  audible, — in  the  movement  and 
music  of  the  verse,  and  the  characteristic  manner  in  which  the 
sense  overflows  and  spreads  from  one  poem  to  another,  sonnet 
upon  sonnet  coming  away  from  the  poet's  bosom,  as  Coleridge 
finely  said  of  Shakspeare's,  'sigh  after  sigh.'  Take  the  close  of 
the  sSlh  and  the  opening  of  the  59th  for  example : — 

'  Then  love  betimes  ;  these  withered  flowers  of  yore 
Revive  :  thy  bewtie  lost  retumes  no  more.' 

'  Ah  me,  sweet  bewtie  lost  retumes  no  more.' 
In  addition  to  '  Ah,  sweet  Content '  (Barnes's  66th),  which,  as  Dr. 
Grosart  truly  says  (Intro,  p.  xvi),  might  have  gone  into  the  Arcadia 
for  its  '  sweet,  soft  simpleness,'  and  with  which  the  reader  may  have 
had  a  previous  acquaintance,  in  a  mutilated  form,  from  Beloe," 

•  Anecdotes  0/ Literature,  &c.,  1807,  ii,  77. 


Notes  305 

Bliss,'  or  Willmott,''  the  three  following  examples — Sons.  60,  65, 
and  67  of  the  Parthenophil — may  not  be  unacceptable,  since  for 
many  readers  the  reprint  must  be  as  inaccessible  as  the  original  ; 
and  I  place  65  first  in  order,  since  it  directly  precedes  and  is  pre- 
lusive of  the  sonnet  in  our  text.  Notwithstanding  its  language  of 
conventional  pastoralism,  let  us  not  doubt  that  the  very  emotions 
of  Bums  are  finding  voice  in  it — the  same  passionate  love  and  regret: 

'  Nad  lue  7iever  loved  sae  kindly. 
Had  ime  never  loved  sae  blindly. 
Never  tnet — or  never  parted. 
We  had  ne'er  been  broketi-hearted .' 

Oh  that  I  had  no  hart,  as  I  have  none, 

(For  thou  mine  hartes  full  spirite  hast  possessed,) 

Then  should  myne  argument  be  not  of  mone. 

Then  under  loves  yoke  should  I  not  be  pressed  : 

Oh  that  without  myne  eyes  I  had  been  borne. 

Then  had  I  not  my  mistresse  bewtie  vewed. 

Then  had  I  never  been  so  farre  forlorne, 

Then  had  I  never  wep't,  then  never  rewed  : 

Oh  that  I  never  had  been  borne  at  all. 

Or  beeing,  had  been  borne  of  shepheardes  broode, 

Then  should  I  not  in  such  mischances  fall,  * 

Quyet  my  water  and  content  my  foode  : 

But  now  disquieted,  and  still  tormented, 

With  adverse  fate  perfoice  must  rest  contented. 

Whilst  some  the  Trojane  warres  in  verse  recount, 

And  all  the  Grecian  Conquerours  in  fight. 

Some  valiant  Romaine  warres  bove  starres  do  mount, 

With  all  their  warlike  leaders,  men  of  might  : 

Whilst  some  of  Bryttish  Arthures  valure  sing, 

And  register  the  prayse  of  Charlemayne  : 

And  some  of  doughtie  Godfrey  tydinges  bring, 

And  some  the  Germaine  broyles,  and  warres  of  Spayne : 

In  none  of  those,  my  selfe  I  wounded  finde. 

Neither  with  horseman,  nor  with  man  on  foote  : 

But  from  a  cleare  bright  eye,  one  captaine  blinde 

(Whose  puisance  to  resist  did  nothing  boote) 

With  men  in  golden  armes,  and  dartes  of  golde, 

Wounded  my  hart,  and  all  which  did  beholde. 

If  Cupid  keepe  his  quiver  in  thine  eye. 
And  shoote  at  over-daring  gasers  hartes, 
Alas,  why  be  not  men  afrayde,  and  fllye 
As  from  Medusaes,  doubting  after  smartes  ? 


1  Wood's  AihencF  Oxon.,  1815.  ii,  col.  48-49.  Bhss  notes:  'Having  never  seen 
any  of  Barnes's  poetical  works  in  their  original  form,  I  am  cornpelled  to  be  satisfied 
with  the  following  lines  from  his  Parthenophel  {sic\  extracted  by  Beloe  1  hey  give 
so  favourable  an  idea  of  his  style,  that  it  is  to  be  lamented  the  editor  of  the  Anecdotes 
of  Literature  did  not  oblige  his  readers  with  a  more  particular  analysis  ot,  and 
further  specimens  from,  a  volume  of  as  great  merit  as  rarity.' 

"  Lives  of  the  Sacred  Poets,  1834,  p.  17. 


U 


3o6  Notes 

^fTrnnbc  §fintts, 

PAGE 

Ah,  when  he  drawes  his  string,  none  sees  his  bow, 
Nor  heares  his  golden  fethred  arrowes  sing  ; 
Ay  me,  till  it  be  shot  no  man  doth  know, 
Untill  his  hart  be  pricked  with  the  sting  : 
Like  semblance  beares  the  musket  in  the  field 
It  hittes,  and  killes  imseene,  till  unawares 
To  death  the  wounded  man  his  body  yeeld  ; 
And  thus  a  pesant  Caesars  glorie  dares  : 
This  diffrence  left,  twixt  Mars  his  field,  and  loves, 
That  Cupids  souldior  shot,  more  torture  proves.' 

55— cix.  The  70th  of  A  Divine  Centurie  of  Spiritnall  Sonnets,  1595. 
I  subjoin  the  88th  also,  on  which  Park,  their  first  editor  {Heliconia, 
1815,  ii,  62),  having  connected  1.  4  with  Psalm  xix,  5,  annotates : 
'  This  is  an  excellent  sonnet.  It  blends  the  liquid  sweetness  of 
rhyme  with  the  varied  cadence  of  blank  verse,  and  dignity  of 
thought  with  felicity  of  expression.' 

The  worldes  bright  comforter  (whose  beamesome  light 
Poore  creatures  cheereth)  mounting  from  the  deepe, 
*     His  course  doth  in  prefixed  compasse  keepe. 
And  as  courageous  Gyant  takes  delight 
To  runne  his  race,  and  exercise  his  might. 
Till  him  downe  galloping  the  mountaynes  steepe, 
Cleerc  Hesperus,  smoothe  messenger  of  sleepe. 
Views  ;  and  the  silver  ornament  of  night 
Foorth  bringes,  with  starres  past  number  in  her  trayne  : 
All  which  with  Sunnes  long  borrowed  splendour  shine. 
The  Seas  (with  full  tyde  swelling)  ebbe  agayne  ; 
All  yeeres  to  their  olde  quarters  newe  resigne  ; 
The  windes  forsake  their  mountayne-chambers  wilde, 
And  all  in  all  thinges  with  Gods  vertue  filde. 

These  favourably  exemplify  Barnes's  religious  muse,  and,  with  the 
fe-#  others  of  a  similar  character  belonging  to  the  reigns  of  Elizabeth 
and  James  I.,  given  elsewhere,  represent  a  vast  body  of  devotional 
literature  produced  at  that  time  in  sonnet-form  which  can  be  turned 
to  little  account  by  the  anthologist;  and  which  unfortunately  appears 
to  all  the  greater  disadvantage  by  the  side  of  the  contemporaneous 
secular  poetry  with  which  one  involuntarily  contrasts  it.  To  the 
reader  who  desires  a  typical  example  of  this  alleged  disproportion 
of  quantity  and  quality — 'mass  versus  genius,'  in  Mr.  Emerson's 
phrase — I  recommend  with  all  confidence  the  Sundrie  Sonnets  of 
Chnstian  Passions  (over  three  hundred  and  twenty  in  number)  of 
Henry  Lok  (1597).  There  is  one  nameless  singer,  however,  to 
whom  we  must  listen  here  for  a  moment  {Ancient  Devotional  Poetry  : 
>  '  Dainty  and  quaint '  assuredly,  as  Dr.  Grosart  remarks  (Intro,  p.  xvi). 


Notes  307 

PAGE 

Now  first  published  from  a  Manuscript  of  the  XVIth  or  XV lit h 
Century.      Loud.  1846)  :  ' 

Up,  sluggish  Soule,  awake,  slumber  no  more, 
This  is  no  time  to  sleepe  in  sin  secure  ; 
If  once  the  Bridegroome  passe  and  shutt  the  dore 
No  entrance  will  be  gaind,  thou  maist  bee  sure. 
Now  thou  art  up,  fill  up  thy  lampe  with  oile, 
Hast  thee  and  light  it  at  the  fire  of  love  ; 
Watch,  and  attend  ;  what  is  a  little  toile 
To  gaine  thee  entrance  to  the  joies  above  ? 
Go,  meete  the  Bridegroome  with  low  i-everence, 
Humbly,  with  patience,  waite  upon  his  grace, 
Follow  his  steppes  with  love  and  diligence. 
Leave  all  for  Him,  and  only  Him  embrace  : 
So  shalt  thou  enter  with  him  into  rest, 
And  at  his  heavenlie  table  sit  and  feast. 

Ation. 

Sonne  of  the  Virgin  most  immaculate, 

Who,  to  sett  ope  the  heavenlie  kingdome's  gate 

To  true  beleevers,  diddest  tread  alone 

The  winepresse,  and  so  God  and  man  attone  ; 

O  let  one  drop  of  that  most  pretious  juice. 

Which  from  thy  side  did  flow  as  from  a  sluce, 

Fall  to  my  share  :  one  drop  will  satisfie 

My  soule,  O  Lord  ;  do  not  a  drop  denie. 

Give  to  my  thirstie  soule,  that  waites  on  thee, 

A  tast  how  sweete  thy  saving  mercies  bee. 

Give,  for  I  meritt  not  ;  my  faith  relies 

On  thy  free  grace  which  never  did  despise 

The  sinner  that  repented,  and  forsooke 

The  evill  waies  that  fomierly  hee  tooke. 

Atton. 

56 — ex.  Dr.  Trench  has  a  note  on  this  sonnet,  which  contains  an  admi- 
rable summary  of  Donne's  character  {A  Household  Book  of  English 

'  In  the  Catalogue  of  the  Collection  0/  Manuscripts  formed  by  the  late  Benja- 
min Heyivood  Bright,  Esg..  sold  in  June,  1844,  by  Messrs.  S.  Leigh,  Sotheby,  and 
Co.,  the  article  No.  1S6  is  thus  described  :— '  Poems  of  the  time  of  Queen  Eliz.nbeth, 
written  in  a  beautiful  clear  hand  on  vellum  ;  they  are  of  a  religious  character,  and 
appear  not  to  have  been  printed.'  The  MS.,  which  consists  of  one  hundred  and  six 
poems,  chiefly  sonnets  of  the  native  English  type,  subsequently  became  the  property 
of  George  Stokes,  Esq.,  of  Cheltenham,  by  whom  it  was  edited  for  the  Religious  Tract 
Society,  the  poems  being  regarded  as  valuably  illustrative  of  the  principles  of  the 
immediate  successors  of  the  English  Reformers.  He  justly  observes  :  '  The  general 
tone  of  doctrine,  with  the  sentiments  pervading  the  whole,  will,  it  is  trusted,  amply 
satisfy  the  reader,  if  any  part  should  not  fully  meet  his  wishes,  either  as  to  the  matter 
or  the  manner  in  which  it  is  set  forth.  The  rhythm  is  often  rugged,  as  is  usual  in 
other  poetry  of  that  day  ;  but  it  is  free  from  the  false  glitter,  affected  antithesis,  and 
laborious  pedantry,  which  characterize  most  of  the  contemporaneous  versification, 
while  the  force,  beauty,  and  simplicity  of  many  e.vpressions,  give  this  little  work  a 
high  place  among  ancient  English  poetry.'  The  writer  of  an  article  on  this  publica- 
tion in  The  Gentleman's  Magazine  for  March,  1847,  thinks  the  poems  bear  stronger 
marks  of  the  early  part  of  the  17th  than  the  i6th  century. 


3o8  Notes 

l^obit  Sonne. 


PAGE 


Poetry,  1868,  p.  403)  : — '  A  rough  ragged  piece  of  verse,  as  indeed 
almost  all  Donne's  poetry  is  imperfect  in  form  and  workmanship  ; 
but  it  is  the  genuine  cry  of  one  engaged  in  that  most  terrible  of  all 
straggles,  wherein,  as  we  are  winners  or  losers,  we  have  won  all 
or  lost  all.  There  is  indeed  much  in  Donne,  in  the  unfolding  of 
his  moral  and  spiritual  life,  which  often  reminds  us  of  St.  Augus- 
tine. I  do  not  mean  that,  noteworthy  as  on  many  accounts  he 
was,  and  in  the  language  of  Carew,  one  of  his  contemporaries, 

"  A  king  who  ruled  as  he  thought  fit 
The  universal  monarchy  of  wit," 

he  at  all  approached  in  intellectual  or  spiritual  stature  to  the  great 
Doctor  of  the  Western  Church.  But  still  there  was  in  Donne  the 
same  tumultuous  youth,  the  same  entanglement  in  youthful  lusts, 
the  same  conflict  with  these,  and  the  same  final  deliverance  from 
them  ;  and  then  the  same  passionate  and  personal  grasp  of  the  cen- 
tral truths  of  Christianity,  linking  itself  as  this  did  with  all  that  he 
had  suffered,  and  all  that  he  had  sinned,  and  all  through  which  by 
God's  grace  he  had  victoriously  struggled.'  It  may  be  added  that 
whereas  it  has  been  usual  to  assign  Donne's  principal  Divine  Poems 
to  his  'last  best  dayes,'  his  latest  editor,  Dr.  Grosart,  demonstrates 
that  most  of  them  belong,  not  to  the  close,  but  to  the  commence- 
ment of  his  poetic  period,  while  he  was  still  a  Roman  Catholic. 
56 — CXI,  5.  Cp.  cxiv,  14.  5-6.  He  is  thinking  of  Cicero's  argument 
{Tuscul.  Disput.,  i,  38) :  '  Habes  somnum  imaginem  mortis,'  &c. 
Cp.  Shakspeare  {Measw'e  for  Measure,  iii,  i,  17): 

'  Thy  best  of  rest  is  sleep, 
And  that  thou  oft  provok'st ;  yet  grossly  fear'st 
Thy  death,  which  is  no  more.' 

j<7<>«^j^  =  most  willingly  {rathest,  as  he  might  have  said,  had  not 
the  form  already  been  allowed  to  drop.  Or  did  he  mean  (literally) 
earliest,  in  allusion  to  the  proverbial  'Whom  the  gods  love  die 
young?'  Jw^Z/'j/ r=  boastest — or  'brag',  as  Shakspeare's  word 
was  in  Liv  (p.  28) : 

'  Nor  shall  Death  brag  thou  wander'st  in  his  shade. 

An  instance  of  the  adjectival  form,  as  in  Scripture  and  in  Shak- 
speare frequently,  may  be  cited  from  the  posthumous  version  of 
Drammond's  sonnet,  cxxiv  {Poems,  ed.  1656,  p.  103)  : 

'  A  swelling  Thought  of  holding  Sea  and  Land.' 
14.  Cp.  Pev.  xxi,  4,  and  the  metrical  Paraphrase  thereof,  together 


Notes  309 

PAGE 

with  Shakspeare  again,  Son,  146  (cv,  14,  with  note).     Later,  in  his 
Ehgie  on  Mris.  Boulstred,  we  have  Donne's  palinode  : 

'  Death,  I  recant,  and  say.  Unsaid  by  mee 
What  ere  hath  slip'd  that  might  diminish  thee.' 

On  the  fly-leaf  of  his  copy  of  Donne  (first  ed.)  the  late  Mr.  Dyce 
notes  in  reference  to  the  present  sonnet :  '  When  I  was  preparing 
my  Specimens  of  English  Sonnets,  Wordsworth  wrote  to  me  to  re- 
quest that  I  would  not  overlook  this  one,  which  he  thought  very  fine.' 
Wordsworth's  words  were  {Prose  Works,  1876,  iii,  332)  :  '  The  loth 
sonnet  of  Donne,  beginning  "Death,  be  not  proud,"  is  so  eminently 
characteristic  of  his  manner,  and  at  the  same  time  so  weighty  in  the 
thought,  and  vigorous  in  the  expression,  that  I  would  entreat  you  to 
insert  it,  though  to  modern  taste  it  may  be  repulsive,  quaint,  and 
laboured.' 
56 — CX-CXI.  Nos.  I  and  6  of  a  group  of  twelve  '  Holy  Sonnets '  (aug- 
mented to  sixteen  in  later  editions)  :  Poems,  by  y.  D.  With  Elegies 
on  the  Authors  Death,  1633. 

^.(Rillicnn   Jlnimmoiii). 

'  Shall  I  be  thought  fantastical,  if  I  confess,  that  the  names  of  some 
of  our  poets  sound  sweeter,  and  have  a  finer  relish  to  the  ear — to  mine 
at  least — than  that  of  Milton  or  of  Shakspeare?  It  may  be,  that  the 
latter  are  more  staled  and  rung  upon  in  common  discourse.  The  sweetest 
names,  and  which  carry  a  perfume  in  the  mention,  are,  Kit  Marlowe, 
Drayton,  Drummond  of  Hawthornden,  and  Cowley.' — Charles  Lamb? 

'  The  next  best  sonnet-writer  to  Shakespeare,  in  point  of  time,  is 
Drummond  of  Hawthornden  ;  and  he  has  a  value  of  his  own.  I  use  the 
old  local  designation  in  speaking  of  him,  forwe  have  not  too  manysuch, 
and  it  would  be  an  especial  pity  in  his  case  to  let  it  drop,  for  he  was  a 
genuine  lover  of  trees  and  bowers,  and  deserved  the  good  fortune — rare 
for  a  poet — of  possessing  an  estate  in  the  bosom  of  them.  Drummond's 
sonnets,  for  the  most  part,  are  not  only  of  the  legitimate  order,  but  they 
are  the  earliest  in  the  language  that  breathe  what  may  be  called  the  habit 
of  mind  observable  in  the  best  Italian  writers  of  sonnets  ;  that  is  to  say,  a 
mixture  of  tenderness,  elegance,  love  of  countr)',seclusion,and  conscious 
sweetness  of  verse.  We  scent  his  "  musked  eglantines,"  listen  to  his 
birds,  and  catch  glimpses  of  the  "  sweet  hermitress  "  whose  loss  he  de- 
plored. Drummond  was  not  without  the  faults  of  prototypes  inferior  to 
those  writers.  His  Italian  scholarship  in  some  measure  seduced,  as  well 
as  inspired  him  ;  but  upon  the  whole  his  taste  was  excellent ;  and  he 

'  The  Last  Essays  0/ Elia,  1S33,  p.  49. 


3IO  Notes 

SftlilUnm  gnimmcuiJ. 

leaves  upon  his  readers  the  impression  of  an  elegant-minded  and  affec- 
tionate man.' — Leigh  Hunt} 

,'  His  Sonnets  are  in  the  highest  degree  elegant,  harmonious,  and 
striking.  It  appears  to  me  that  they  are  more  in  the  manner  of  Petrarch 
than  any  others  that  we  have.  *  .  .  I  cannot  but  think  that  [they]  come 
as  near  as  almost  any  others  to  the  perfection  of  this  kind  of  writing.' — 
Hazlitt} 

'  Exquisitely  tender,  picturesque,  and  harmonious.' — Dyce.'' 

'  Through  the  greater  part  of  his  verse  we  hear  a  certain  muffled 
tone  of  the  sweetest,  like  the  music  that  ever  threatens  to  break  out  clear 
from  the  brook,  from  the  pines,  from  the  rain-shower, — never  does  break 
out  clear,  but  remains  a  suggested,  etherially  vanishing  tone.  His  is  a 
voix  voih'e,  or  veiled  voice  of  song.' — Dr.  George  Mac  Donald} 

Professor  Masson  in  his  recent  monograph  observes  :  '  What  strikes  us 
throughout  in  Drummond's  pieces  is  the  combination  of  a  certain  poetic 
sensuousness ,  or  delight  in  the  beauty  of  scenery,  colours,  forms,  and 
sounds,  with  a  tender  and  rather  elevated  thought  fulness}  Having  exem- 
plified the  former  by  quotations,he  continues  :  '  It  is  an  essential  element 
of  poetic  genius  ;  but  in  some  poets  it  is  so  pronounced  as  almost  to  seem 
in  excess.  Keats's  poetry,  for  example,  is  a  perfect  maze,  an  endlessly- 
rich  v.'ilderness,  of  such  luxuriances  of  sound  and  colour,  such  sensuous 
verbal  sweets.  Drummond,  with  more  of  monotony,  is  yet  Keats-like  in 
as  far  as  he  possessed,  in  a  pleasing  degree,  and  in  sufficient  variety,  that 
love  of  delicious  imagery  and  phraseology  which  almost  always  marks  a 
real  poet.  At  the  same  time  the  general  effect  was  tempered,  redeemed 
from  mere  lusciousness,  and  perhaps  thinned,  by  a  considerable  presence 
in  his  mind  of  the  other,  and  more  intellectual,  element  (which  Keats 
also  possessed  in  no  ordinary  degree)  of  pensive  reason, or  thoughtfulness. 
In  many  of  his  poems  this  domination  of  the  artistic  sensuousness  by  a 
philosophical  pensiveness  may  be  distinctly  observed,  and  not  least  in 
some  of  his  sonnets.  Drummond,  whether  from  his  intimacy  with  the 
Italian  poets,  or  from  other  causes,  was  especially  fond  of  tins  form  of 
composition,  and  wrote  so  much  in  it,  and  so  well,  that  he  came  to  be 
named,  even  in  his  life-time,  "  the  Scottish  Petrarch."'^ 

Drummond  has  often  been  blamed  for  appropriation  ;  and  it  must  be 
confessed  that  both  the  matter  and  the  manner  of  others  are  somewhat 
freely  reproduced  in  his  writings.     But  was  the  practice  in  degree  or  in 

'  The  Book  of  the  Sonnet^  i,  78. 

*  Lectures  on  ike  Literature  0/  the  Age  of  Elizabeth^  ed.  1S70,  pp.  177-181. 
'  Specijiiens  of  English  Sonnets,  1833,  p.  214. 

*  England's  Antiplion,  p.  146. 

'  Drummond  ofHavjthornden  :  The  Story  of  his  Life  and  lVritings,i^Ti,^M. 


Notes  311 

kind  such  as  to  justify  the  charge  of  literary  theft  against  him?  Assuredly 
not.  The  truth  is  that  Drummond's  mind  was  peculiarly  plastic  and 
imitative,  and,  like  some  greater  writers  whose  originality  will  hardly  be 
questioned — Milton  and  Coleridge,  for  example — he  habitually  nermit- 
ted,  consciously  and  intentionally  no  doubt,  recollections  of  his  reading 
to  shape  and  colour  much  that  he  wrote.  This  mental  trait  in  men  of  such 
calibre,  is  rather  an  amiability  than  a  reproach.  In  Dmmmond's  case  at 
all  events  it  must  be  attributed  to  something  very  different  from  necessity. 
He  was  only  too  diffident,  too  modest !  and  the  occasions  on  which, 
losing  sight  of  his  foreign  models,  he  expresses  his  own  thoughts  and 
feelings  in  his  own  way,  make  us  regret  that  he  ever  saw  one  of  them,  or 
at  least  that  he  did  not  think  less  of  them  and  more  of  himself.  From  a 
passage  in  the  Eikoiioklastes  (chap,  xxiii)  we  learn  incidentally  what 
Milton  recognized  as  the  necessary  condition  of  legitimate  '  new-dress- 
ing,' as  contradistinguished  from'  plagiary,' — that  the  thing  '  borrowed ' 
be  'bettered  by  the  borrower.'  Now,  with  the  exception  perhaps  of 
Milton  himself,  who  was  a  great  '  borrower' — our  poet  not  the  least  of 
his  creditors — it  would  be  difficult  to  name  any  writer  between  Shak- 
speare  and  Tennyson  who  fulfils  that  condition  more  perfectly  than 
Drummond.     Tried  by  the  principle  that 

'  The  thought  is  his  at  last  who  says  it  best,' 

he  has  infinitely  more  to  gain  than  to  lose  in  a  comparison  with  those 
writers  to  whom  he  is  alleged  to  have  been  so  much  indebted.  The 
Italian,  French,  and  Spanish  sources  from  which  he  drew  have  been 
more  particularly  cited  against  him  ;  but  his  writings  evince  an  equal 
affection  for  our  '  homely  wits,'  of  whose  works,  as  we  know  from  his 
library-catalogue  which  has  been  preserved,  he  owned  a  considerable 
collection.  Of  these  none  gained  such  an  ascendency  over  him  as  Sir 
Philip  Sidney,  whom  he  held  to  have  '  surpast  Petrarch.'.  Yet  if  it  can- 
not be  denied  that  he  did  repair  rather  frequently  to  that  fountain — 
drenching  himself  (to  apply  Crashaw's  metaphor)  in 

'  Sydnsean  showers 
Of  sweet  discourse  ' — 

it  must  be  conceded  that  he  gave  them  off  again  sublimated  and  beauti- 
fied by  his  own  genius, — '  quintessenced  in  a  finer  substance,'  as  he  puts 
it  himself  in  some  remarks  on  this  very  question.'     Nor  ought  it  to  be 

'  Heads  of  a  Conversation  betwixt  the  Famous  Poet  Ben  Johnson,  and  Willinin 
Drutnvtond  0/ Nawthornden,  January,  i6ig  : -p^-'-irMed  in  The  Works  ofWilliavi 
Drummond  of  Hawthornden.  Consisting  of  those  which  %vere  formerly  /'rinted, 
and  those  luhick  tuere  design  d  for  the  Press.  Now  Published  from  the  A  uthors 
Original  Copies.  Edinburgh,  fol..  ijii.p.  226.  This  edition  was  published  under  the 
superintendence  of  Bishop  Sage  (who  wrote  the  Life)  and  Thomas  Ruddiman.  See 
also  the  '  Shakespeare  Society  '  ed.  of  the  Conversations,  edited  by  the  late  David 
Laing,  1842,  p.  49. 


312 


Notes 


SliUinm    Qrummonir. 

forgotten  that  in  thus  excelling  his  English  master,  Drummond  achieved 
for  Scotland  the  distinction  of  having  brought  to  perfection  the  style 
inaugurated  by  Wyat  and  Surrey  a  hundred  years  before. 

Drummond's  collection  of  books,  gifted  by  him  to  the  University  of 
Edinburgh  in  1627-1630,  included  two  of  Shakspeare's  plays,  from 
which,  as  Prof.  Masson  points  out,  he  made  appropriations  '  almost  bor- 
dering on  plagiarism.'  One  of  these  cases  may  be  particularized  by  way 
of  illustration, — the  powerful  image  employed  in  a  description  of  sun- 
rise (Poems,  1616,  sig.  E2) : 

'  Night  like  a  Drunkard  reeles 
Beyond  the  Hills  to  shunne  his  flaming  Wheeles.' 

This  will  be  instantly  recognizable  by  many  who  may  never  have 
read  a  line  of  Drummond  ;  yet  even  here  it  might  fairly  be  questioned 
whether  the  Scottish  poet  has  not  improved  on  his  original  {Komeo  and 
Juliet,  1599,  sig.  D4)  : 

'  And  fleckeld  darknesse  like  a  drunkard  reeles, 
From  forth  dales  path,  and  Titans  burning  wheeles.' ' 

Prof.  Masson,  like  others  earlier,  inclines  to  think  that  Drummond 
knew  Shakspeare's  Sonnets  also  ;  but,  excepting  a  reminder  that  these 
had  been  published  in  1609,  he  offers  nothing  in  support  of  his  opinion. 
I  have  however  marked  several  passages  apparently  confirmatory  of  it, 
one  of  which  in  particular  (cxxx,  13-14,  note,  p.  330)  it  is  difficult  to  re- 
gard otherwise  than  as  reminiscent  of  the  close  of  Shakspeare's  29th  Son- 
net (p.  30)  ;  though  perhaps  no  evidence  was  needed  further  than  what, 
to  me  at  least,  has  always  seemed  a  very  obvious  allusion  to  the  famous 
quarto  of  1609  :  viz.  in  the  '  Character  of  several  Authors,  given  by  Mr. 
Drummond'  (1613-1616?),  where  Sir  William  Alexander  '  and  Shake- 
spear  '  are  included  in  an  enumeration  of  English  amatory  sonneteers, 
and  described  as  having  '  lately  published  their  Works.' - 

1  I  quote  from  Drummond's  own  copy,  preserved  in  the  Library  of  the  University 
of  Edinburgh.  Like  many  of  the  other  volumes  in  that  most  interesting  collection,  it 
contains  numerous  markings  in  the  poet's  handwriting,  but  there  is  none  at  this  pas- 
sage. Dr.  Grosart  notes  a  remembrance  of  the  Friar's  words,  in  the  opening  of  Cra- 
shaw's  poem  On  a  Foule  Morning  {Complete  Works,  i,  1S72,  235)  : 

'  Where  art  thou  Sol,  while  thus  the  blind-fold  Day 
Staggers  out  of  the  East,  loses  her  way 
Stumbling  on  Night?' 

'  JVofes  of  Ben  Jonson's  Conversations,  &c.,  Shak.  Soc.  ed.,  p.  48.  A  specific 
parallel  of  the  most  decisive  character  is  pointed  out  in  Notes  and  Queries,  28  Oct., 
1876  :  viz.  between  stanza  3  of  ^  Lovers  complaint  (printed  with  the  Sonnets,  1609)  : 

'  Oft  did  she  heave  her  Napkin  to  her  eyne, 
Which  on  it  had  conceited  charecters  : 
Laundring  the  silken  figures  in  the  brine. 
That  seasoned  woe  had  pelleted  in  teares  ' — 


Notes  213 

Drummond,  like  '  a  true  worke-man  in  so  great  affaire,'  showed  much 
solicitude  as  to  the  verbal  niceties  of  his  art  ;  and  the  various  readings 
printed  duringhis  lifetime  justify,  in  some  measure,  the  conclusion  that 
the  numerous  and  imiDortant  textual  changes  of  the  London  posthumous 
edition  of  1656,  (edited  by  Milton's  nephew,  Edward  Phillips,' and 
generally  followed  in  the  Edinburgh  folio  of  1711,)  were  of  the  poet's 
own  making.  For  this  reason,  and  because  it  is,  me  judice,  a  case  of 
exceptional  interest,  I  had  carefully  collated  all  the  printed  texts,  together 
with,  in  many  instances,  by  courteous  permission,  Drummond's  own 
MSS.,  as  preserved  by  the  late  Mr.  Laing's  good  care  in  the  Library  of 
the  Society  of  Scottish  Antiquaries  ;  but  an  increasing  scepticism  as  to 
the  perfect  authenticity  of  these  editions — especially  the  later,  which 
frequently  emits  a  distinctly  eighteenth  century  sound — determines  me 
on  adhering  exclusively  (a  word  or  two  excepted)  to  those  that  last  passed 
under  the  poet's  own  hand.     They  are,  almost  invariably,  the  best. 

PAGE 

57— cxii,  10.  oft  (1656) :   'of  '  (1616). 

cxiii.  An  eloquent  critic  {Retrospective  Review,  1824,  ix,  359) 
characterizes  this  sonnet  as  'one  of  the  finest  in  the  language.' 

58  — cxiv,  3.  This  fine  characterization  of  Sleep— with  which  cp.  Sid- 
ney's (xxix,  4,  p.  15)— recalls  the  King's  invocation,  2  Hen.  IV, 
iii,  I,  as  perhaps  its  most  appropriate  comment.  Drummond 
almost  repeats  himself,  speaking  of  Death  (An  Hymne  of  the 
Fairest  Faire  :  Flozures  of  Sion,  1623,  p.  36) : 

'  Indifferent  Umpire  unto  Clownes  and  Kings.' 
spares— ■s^zx'i'L — in  the  sense  of  refrain,  as  in  Milton  (CL,  13,  p.  76), 
the  image  of  my  death.  The  thought  (see  under  CXI,  5-6,  p.  308)  may 
have  been  familiarized  to  many  English  readers  through  T.  Warton's 
famous  epigram,'  Somne  levis,  quanquam  certissima  mortis  imago,' 
&c.,  which  was  originally  written  for  a  statue  of  Somnus  in  the 

and  a  sonnet  of  Drummond's  {Poems,  1616,  sig.  H3)  : 

.  .  .  '  deare  Napkin,  doe  not  grieve 
That  I  this  Tribute  pay  thee  from  mine  Eine, 
And  that  (these  posting  Houres  I  am  to  live) 
I  iaundre  thy  faire  Figures  in  this  Brine.' 

1  There  seems  something  of  the  irony  of  fate  in  the  circumstance  that  the  task  of 
editing  the  Tory  Drummond's  poems  should  fall  into  the  hands  of  the  kinsman  of 
Milton, — into  Milton's  own,  in  a  sense.  It  was  no  doubt  to  his  uncle  that  Phillips  pri- 
marily owed  his  acquaintance  with  and  admiration  of  the  poems  ;  and  to  me  Milton's 
in  piration — if  not  his  very  language — is  as  clearly  discernible  in  his  nephew's  eulo- 
gistic preface  to  Drummond  as  in  the  article  on  Shakspeare  in  the  subsequent  Thca- 
triiii!  Poctarum  (1675).  Phillips's  notice  of  Drummond  in  the  latter  may  be  quoted, 
as  it  is  brief,  and  not  without  force  still  (p.  192)  :  '  William  Drummond  of  Hawthorn- 
den,  a  Scotch  Gentleman  of  considerable  note  and  esteem.  Flourishing  in  K.James 
his  Reign  ;  who  imitating  the  Italian  manner  of  versifying,  vented  his  Amours  in 
Sonnets,  Canzonets  and  Madrigals,  and  to  my  thinking,  in  a  style  sufficiently  smooth 
and  delightful  ;  and  therefore  why  so  utterly  disregarded,  and  layd  aside  at  present, 
I  leave  to  the  more  curious  palats  in  Poetry.' 


314  Notes 

ffililliam   §lr«mmonb, 

garden  of  Harris,  the  philologist,  and  of  which  many  translations 
have  been  made,  that  by  Wolcot — '  produced  in  a  few  minutes, '  says 
Polwhele,  for  whom  it  was  done  (see  his  Theocritus,  i8ll,  ii,  1 13) — 
being  as  graceful  as  any,  if  about  the  least  literal : 

Come,  gentle  sleep,  attend  thy  votary's  prayer, 
And,  though  death's  image,  to  my  couch  repair ; 
How  sweet,  thus  lifeless,  yet  with  life  to  lie, 
Thus,  without  dying,  O  how  sweet  to  die  ! ' 

DiTimmond,  who  as  usual  may  have  had  a  verse  of  Sir  Philip's  in 

•    his  memory  {Arcadia,  Lib.  3,  p.  260,  ed.  1598)  : 

'  A  dull  desire  to  kisse  the  image  of  our  death,' 

repeats  the  expression  {Poans,  1616,  sig.  I) : 

'  When  I,  whose  Eyes  no  drowsie  Night  could  close. 
In  Sleepes  soft  Armes  did  quietly  repose. 
And,  for  that  Heavens  to  die  mee  did  denie, 
Deaths  Image  kissed,  and  as  dead  did  lie.' 

The  following  list  of  instances,  which,  like  that  under  XLVI,  might 
be  indefinitely  extended,  may  prove  useful : — Virgil  {The  ALneids, 
transl.  William  Morris,  1876,  vi,  522),  who  describes  Sleep  as  a 

'  Deep  rest  and  sweet,  most  like  indeed  to  death's 
own  quietness  ; ' 

Shakspeare  {Macbeth,  ii,  3,  81): 

'  Shake  off  this  downy  sleep,  death's  counterfeit ; 
{A  Midsummer  Night's  Dream,  iii,  2,  364) : 

'  Death-counterfeiting  sleep  ; ' 
{Cymbeline,  ii,  2,  31) : 

'  O  sleep,  thou  ape  of  death,  lie  dull  upon  her  ! ' 
John  Dowland's  {First  Booke  of  Songes  or  Ayres,  1597,  xx) : 

'  Come,  heavy  sleepe,  the  image  of  true  death  ; ' 
John  Davies.of  YL^x&iox^  {Microcosmos ,  1603,  ed.  Grosart,  i,  33): 

'  Dead  sleepe,  Deathe's  other  name  and  Image  true  ; ' 
Earl  of  Sterline  {Aurora,  1604,  Son.  29) : 

'  Whil'st  I  embrac'd  the  shadow  of  my  death  ; ' 
Donne  (cxi,  4-5,  p.  56) : 

.  .   .   '  rest  and  sleep,  which  but  thy  pictures  be  ; ' 
(  Woman's  Constancy,  ed.  Grosart,  ii,  1873,  p.  161) : 

'  Sleepe,  Death's  image  ; ' 


Notes  315 


PAGE 


Sir  Thomas  Browne  {Religio  Medici,  §  12)  :  '  In  fine,  so  like  death, 
I  dare  not  trust  it  without  my  prayers  ; '  and,  lastly,  Cowley  (fin  the 
Death  of  Mr.   William  Hervey  :  Works,  168 1,  p.  18) : 

'When  Sleep,  Death's  image,  left  my  troubled  breast.' 

The  whole  invocation,  an  imitation  of  the  '  O  del  Silentio  figlio  ' 
of  Marini,  whose  Rime  had  been  read  by  Drummond  in  1613, 
should  be  compared  with  XXIX,  and  those  enumerated  under  it, 
p.  254.  The  melancholy  which  pervades  the  greater  part  of  Drum- 
mond's  writings  was  not  the  factitious  emotion  of  a  riming  amourist, 
but  came  of  a  real  experience,  the  bereavement  referred  to  under 
cxx,  p.  319  ;  and  some  of  his  most  inimitable  little  pieces  were  pro- 
duced under  its  shadow, — in  moods  when  he  seems  to  have  been, 
like  Keats,  '  half  in  love  with  easeful  Death.'  One  highly  charac- 
teristic '  Madrigall '  may  be  quoted  {Poems,  1616,  sig.  H4) : 

'  My  Thoughts  hold  mortall  Strife, 

I  doe  detest  my  Life, 

And  with  lamenting  Cries, 

(Peace  to  my  Soule  to  bring) 

Oft  calles  that  Prince  which  here  doth  Monarchise  ; 

But  Hee,  grimme  grinning  King, 

Who  Catives  scornes,  and  doth  the  Blest  surprise. 
Late  having  deckt  with  Beauties  Rose  his  Tombe, 
Disdaines  to  croppe  a  Weede,  and  will  not  come.' 

58 — cxv,  4.  to  :  '  too  '  (1656).     sfeepy  :  '  steppie  '  (1616)  =  steep,  de- 
clining :  as  in  R.  Chester's  Love's  Martyr  (1601),  ed.  Grosart,  1878, 

P-  5  •     '  Environ'd  with  a  high  and  steeple  mountaine  ; ' 

and  Shakspeare's  23rd  Son.  (p.  36)  : 

'  when  his  youthfull  morne 
Hath  travailed  on  to  Ages  steeple  night.' 

10.  Cp.  his  Cypresse  Grove  (p.  81,  ed.  1630) :  '  Dayes  are  not  to  bee 
esteemed  after  the  number  of  them,  but  after  the  goodnesse. '  Read 
in  this  connexion  Whately's  annotation  on  the  opening  sentence  of 
Bacon's  Essay  Of  Youth  and  Age. 
59— cxvi.  ««i7/<?r  =  cinnabar.  Nares  quotes  Ben  1ovi%ox\.  {The  Alche- 
mist, i,  3)  : 

'  I  know  you  have  arsnike, 
Vitriol,  sal-tartre,  argaile,  alkaly, 
Cinoper.' 

See  also  Blount's  Glossographia,  1656,  s.  v.,  and  a  note  by  Park, 
Heliconia,  1815,  ii,  151.  Among  some  charming  inedited  criticisms 
contributed  by  Leigh  Hunt  to  The  True  Sun  daily  newspaper, 
between  August  19th  and  December  25th,  1833,  there  is  one  on 
Cunningham's  edition  of  Drummond,  in  which  he  remarks  : '  Drum- 


3 1 6  Notes 

Sdlilliant  ,5nimmonb. 


PAGE 


mond  had  the  eye  of  a  painter.  He  is  fond  of  colours,  and  knows 
where  to  lay  one  colour  upon  another  ;  which  is  a  secret  of  the  art 
of  a  higher  cast  than  that  of  mere  contrast  and  opposition.'  He 
instances  the  following  '  pretty  picture '  {Poems,  l6i6,  sig.  N3)  : 

OF   PHIL  LIS. 
In  Peticote  of  Greene, 
Her  Haire  about  her  Eine, 
Phillis  beneath  an  Oake 
Sate  milking  her  faire  Flocke  : 
Among  that  strained  Moysture  (rare  Delight  !) 
Her  Hand  seem'd  Milke  in  Milke,  it  was  so  white. 

Between  the  present  sonnet  and  the  next  in  the  text  comes  one 
which  seems  to  have  caught  Milton's  ear  {Poems,  1616,  sig.  D2) : 

Deare  Quirister,  who  from  those  Shaddowes  sends 

(Ere  that  the  blushing  Dawne  dare  show  her  Light) 

Such  sad  lamenting  Straines,  that  Night  attends, 

Become  all  Eare,  Starres  stay  to  heare  thy  Plight ; 

If  one  whose  Griefe  even  Reach  of  Thought  transcends. 

Who  ne're  (not  in  a  Dreame)  did  taste  Delight, 

Mfiy  thee  importune  who  like  Case  pretends, 

And  seemes  to  joy  in  Woe,  in  Woes  Despight ; 

Tell  me  (so  may  thou  Fortune  milder  trie, 

And  long  long  sing)  for  what  thou  thus  complaines, 

Sith  (Winter  gone)  the  Sunne  in  dapled  Skie 

Now  smiles  on  Meadowes,  Mountaines,  Woods,  and  Plaines  ? 

The  Bird,  as  if  my  questions  did  her  move. 

With  trembling  Wings  sobb'd  forth,  '  I  love,  I  love.'  * 

59 — CXVli.  grain  =  colour,  dye.     So  B.  Barnes  (Sestine  2)  : 

'  Thy  cheekes  and  forhead  disaray 

The  rose  and  lillyes  of  their  grayne  ; ' 

and  Milton  {Comus,  750)  of  colourless  cheeks  : 

'  Cheeks  of  sorry  grain.' 

'  It  has  the  Epithet  of  Tyriufn,  because  Tyre,  a  City  of  Phoenicia, 
was  famous  for  the  Fishery  of  the  Murex,  which  was  the  Shell-fish 
yielding  this  Purple  Liquor. ' — Note  in  Lord  Preston' s  translation  of 
Boethius,  2nd ed.,  17 12, p.  80.  lo.  Elsewhere  {Teares  on  the  Death 
of  Moeliades,  1613)  Drummond  thus  refers  to  the  hyacinth  in  its 
mythological  character  {Poems,  Maitland  Club  ed.,  1832,  p.  8) : 


•  Become  all  Eare  :  an  orientalism,  as  in  Milton  (Par.  Lost,  iv,  410,  2nd  ed.  1674); 

'  When  Adam  first  of  men 
To  first  of  women  Eve  thus  moving  speech, 
Turnd  him  all  eare  to  hear  new  utterance  flow.' 


Notes  317 

?AGE 

'  O  hyacinths,  for  ay  your  Ai  keepe  still  : 
Nay,  with  moe  markes  of  woe  your  leaves  now  fill ; ' 

again,  in  the  later  Epitaph  (p.  83) : 

'  Th'  immortall  amaranthus,  princely  rose. 
Sad  violet,  and  that  sweet  flowre  that  beares 
In  sanguine  spots  the  tenor  of  our  woes  ; ' 

which  of  course  Milton  remembered  when  he  assimilated  the  mark- 
ings on  the  sedge  with  those  of  the  hyacinth — oci  oci  =  alas  !  alas  ! — 
{Lycidas,  106) : 

'  Like  to  that  sanguine  flower  inscribed  with  woe,' 

Cp.  also  the  flower-passage  further  on  in  Lycidas,  where  Drummond 
is  not  less  evidently  recalled. 
60 — cxviil.  With  1.  5  cp.  Shakspeare's  '  All  the  world's  a  stage,'  &c. 
{As  You  Like  It,  ii,  7)  ;  Thos.  Newtop's  recommendatory  verses 
prefixed  to  The  Mirour  for  Magistrates,  1597: 

'  Certes  this  worlde  a  stage  may  well  be  calde. 
Whereon  is  playde  the  parte  of  ev'ry  wight ; ' 

Spenser's  sonnet  to  .Gabriel  Harvey,  dated  1586,  printed  at  the  end 
of  Harvey's  FoM-e  Letters,  &c.,  1592:  'this  worlds  stage;'  and 
Amoretti,  54  :  '  this  worlds  Theatre ; '  and  with  II.  5-6,  Shak- 
speare's Son.  15,  3-4  (p-  27) : 

'  When  I  consider  everf  thing  that  growes 
Holds  in  perfection  but  a  little  moment, 
That  this  huge  stage  presenteth  nought  but  showes 
Whereon  the  Stars  in  secret  influence  comment.' 

In  another  early  sonnet  (/'^^wj,  1616,  sig.  L4)  Drummond  speaks  of 

'  those  blacke  Artes 
By  which  base  Mortalles  vildely  play  their  Parts, 
And  staine  with  horride  Actes  Earths  stately  Stage.' 

12.  Not  the  only  instance  in  Drummond  of  this  thought,  which, 
clothed  in  almost  exactly  the  same  words,  was  common  among 
writers  in  and  about  his  time.  See  an  interesting  note,  with  exam- 
ples, by  Dr.  Hannah,  on  Bacon's  use  of  it  {Courtly  Poets,  p.  235). 
14.  Cp.  Shakspeare  {Two  Gentlemen  of  Verona,  i,  i,  42) : 

'  In  the  sweetest  bud 
The  eating  canker  dwells  ; ' 

and  Son.  70  (p.  38) : 

'  For  canker  vice  the  sweetest  buds  doth  love.' 
With  this  sonnet  read  another  a  little  further  on,  unequalled  for 
pathos  {Poems,  1616,  sig.  G4) : 


3i8  Notes 

WMxxm.  Srummonb. 

PAGE 

O  !  it  is  not  to  mee,  bright  Lampe  of  Day, 
That  in  the  East  thou  shew'st  thy  rosie  Face  ; 
O  !  it  is  not  to  mee  thou  leav'st  that  Sea, 
And  in  these  azure  Lists  beginst  thy  Race. 
Thou  shin'st  not  to  the  Dead  in  any  Place, 
And  I  (dead)  from  this  World  am  gone  away. 
Or  if  I  seeme  (a  Shadow)  yet  to  stay, 
It  is  a  while  but  to  bemone  my  Case. 
My  Mirth  is  lost,  my  Comforts  are  dismay'd, 
And  unto  sad  Mis-haps  their  place  doe  yeeld  ; 
My  Knowledge  doth  resemble  a  bloudie  field,     . 
Where  I  my  Hopes  and  Helps  see  prostrate  layd. 
So  painefuU  is  Lifes  Course  w-hich  I  have  runne, 
That  I  doe  wish  it  never  had  begunne. 

60 — CXIX,  5.  stiaky  eye  :  a  Sidneian  phrase.  But  indeed  the  entire 
materials  of  this  sonnet,  as  of  cxxviii,  will  be  found  in  the  '  Ascle- 
piadikes'  sung  by  Dorus  at  the  close  of  the  second  book  of  the 
Arcadia  (p.  233,  ed.  159S) : 

'  O  sweet  woods  the  delight  of  solitarinesse  ! ' 
themselves  taken  from  Pietro  Bembo.  With  Drummond's  version 
cp.  one  by  the  author  of  CCLVII  {Sonnets  by  Rev.  Charles  Strong, 
No.  xciii,  2nd  ed.,  1862).  pace  (1656) :  '  Peace  '  (1616  and  1711). 
silent  horrors  :  the  emotion  produced  by  the  silence,  not  less  than 
the  sound,  of  a  forest  being  that  of  a  kind  of  horror  or  awe.  Dryden 
(Astroea  Redux,  7)  has  '  horrid  stillness  ; '  and  the  phrase  '  horrid 
shade ' — with  which  cp.  the  '  horrific  woods  '  of  Thomson  {Au- 
tumn)— is  quite  classical.  '  Horror '  is  derived  from  hon-eo,  to  bris- 
tle, or  stand  erect,  as  hair,  &c. ;  hence  its  so  frequent  use  in  poeti- 
cal descriptions  of  trees  and,  with  equal  propriety,  of  warriors' 
plumed  helmets.     Cp.  IsiWion  {Comus,  ist  ed.,  1637,  p.  2)  : 

'  their  way 
Lies  through  the  perplex't  paths  of  this  dreare  wood. 
The  nodding  horror  of  whose  shadie  brows 
Threats  the  forlome  and  wandring  Passinger.' 

Chapman  {Iliades  of  Homere,  bk.  iii,  346,  ed.  Hooper,  1857)  : 

'  And  on  his  head  his  glorious  helm  he  set, 
Topp'd  with  a  plume  of  horse's  hair,  that  horribly  did  dance. 
And  seem'd  to  threaten  as  he  mov'd.' 

Fairfax  {Godfrey  of  Boulogne,  i,  39,  p.  9,  2nd  ed.,  1624) : 

'  And  horrid  helmes  high  on  their  heads  they  beare, 
WTien  their  fierce  courage  they  to  war  incline.' 

^    II.  Cp.  Gray's  Elegy,  73  : 

'  Far  from  the  madding  crowd's  ignoble  strife.* 


Notes  3 1 9 

PAGE 

This  is  the  neuter  verb=to  be  mad,  as  in  Wiclif  {Dedis,  c.  26,  apud 
Richardson) :  '  Festus  seide  with  greet  voice,  Poul,  thou  maddest, 
many  lettres  turnen  thee  to  woodnesse.  And  Poul  seide,  I  madde 
not,  thou  best  Festus,  but  I  speak  out  the  wordes  of  treuthe  and 
sobrenesse.'  So  too  Sir  Tho.  Browne  {Hydriotapkia,  §  4)  :  '  Vaine 
ashes  .  .  .  emblems  of  mortal  vanities,  antidotes  against  pride, 
vain-gloiy,  and  madding  vices.'  The  leading  sentiment  of  this  son- 
net and  CXXVIII — the  joy  of  freedom,  the  blessedness  of  the  man 
who,  '  of  bondage  free,'  '  doth  live  his  own  ' — should  be  compared 
with  the  keynote  of  Sir  Henry  Wotton's  noble  lines  on  The  Charac- 
ter of  a  Happy  Life  [Reliquics  IVottoniancs,  1651,  p.  522),  beginning 

'  How  happy  is  he  born  and  taught 
That  serveth  not  another's  will ! ' 

which,  Drummond  tells  us,  Ben  Jonson  had  'by  heart.' 
61 — cxx.  vuiskcd :  '  musket '  (1616).  The  Sweet  hermitress — Miss  Cun- 
ninghame  of  Barns,  '  a  fine  Beautiful  young  Lady  ' — was  betrothed 
to  Drummond  ;  but '  when  the  Day  for  the  Marriage  was  appointed, 
and  all  Things  ready  for  the  Solemnization  of  it,  she  took  a  Fever, 
and  was  suddenly  snatched  away  by  it,  to  his  great  Grief  and  Sor- 
row '  {Life,  prefixed  to  the  folio,  p.  iii).  14.  This  familiar  sentiment, 
not  ungracefully  expressed  by  Drummond,  was  most  probably  recol- 
lected from  Dante  {Inferno,  V,  12 1-3) — himself  indebted,  it  is  sup- 
posed, to  Boethius  {De  Consol.  Phil.,  Lib.  ii,  Prosa  4) :  'In  omni 
adversitate   fortunas   infelicissimum   genus   est   infortunii    fuisse 

felicem  et  non  esse  ' —  ' 

'  Nessun  maggior'  dolore, 
Che  ricordarsi  del  tempo  felice 
Nella  miseria.' " 

1  Old  Sir  Richard  Earckley  gives  it  even  an  earlier  parentage  {A  Discourse  of  tlie 
Feliciiie  of  Man,  1598,  bk.  v,  p.  522)  :  'Alexander  Sever  us  was  used  to  say  :  There 
is  no  kind  of  mis-hap  so  unfortunate,  as  for  a  man  to  call  to  remembrance,  that  in  times 
past  hee  had  beene  fortunate.  Adversity  never  dismayed  any  but  such  as  prosperity 
deceaved.'  A  memorable  modern  instance  may  be  recalled  from  the  brief  soldier-life 
of  Coleridge,  who  was  only  expressmg  his  own  experience  when  he  inscribed  on  his 
stable  wall,  or  door  :  •  Eheu  !  quam  infortunii  miserrimum  est  fuisse  felicem  ! ' 

^  But  cp.  the  higher  philosophy  of  a  living  poet  {Laurella  and  Other  Poems,  1876, 
p.  228)  : 

NESSUN  M.IGGIOW   DOLORE! 
No  greater  grief!     Is  it  then  always  grief 
Remembering  happier  times  in  times  of  sorrow? 
Does  one  day  of  delight  ne'er  bring  relief 
To  the  sick  soul  on  a  despairful  morrow? 
Past  joys  are  a  possession.     Oft  we  borrow 
Strength  for  our  present  pain  from  out  the  brief 
Bright  moments  garnered  long  in  memory's  sheaf — 
August's  rich  grains  make  glad  December's  furrow. 
Have  once  mine  eyes  beheld  in  vision  blest 
Beauty's  dread  form,  or  Love's  death-conquering  face, 
My  heart  leaped  up  transfigured,  as  she  sung,  * 

Who  raised  to  life  my  life,  whose  gentle  breast 
From  the  world's  rush  was  my  one  resting-place, — 
Blind,  deaf,  and  old — I  see,  hear,  still  am  young. 

yohn  Todhunter. 


320  Notes  1 

William  grnmntonb'.  : 

Dante  is  reproduced  thus  by  Chaucer  ( Troylus  and  Cryseyde,  Lib.  ' 

3,  ccxxvi) :  i 

-    '  For  of  fortunes  scharp  adversite  ; 

The  worste  kinde  of  infortune  is  this —  \ 

A  man  to  han  ben  in  prosperite,  ; 

And  it  remembren  when  it  passid  is.' 

Cp.  The  Misfortunes  of  Artktir,  by  Tho.  Hughes,  1587  (Dodsley's 
Old  English  Plays,  ed.  Hazlitt,  iv,  336,  1874) : 

'  Of  all  misfortunes  and  unhappy  fates  : 

Th'  unhappiest  seemes  to  have  been  happy  once  ;  *  j 

Lord  Brooke  (  Workes,  1633,  p.  233)  :  i 

.  .  .   '  he  most  wretched  is 
That  once  most  happy  was ' ' 

•  Ccelica,  '  Sonnet'  83  (=  84),  of  which  Sir  Edward  Dyer's  Fancy — imitated,  in  its  ; 

turn,  or,  as  the  quaint  old  heading  has  it,  '  turned  to  a  sinner's  complaint,'  by  South-  I 

well — is  an  adaptation.  For  all  three  poems  see  Dr.  Grosart's  edition  of  Brooke  (4  vols.  • 

1870),  I,  xlviii,  II,  ixxi,  and  in,  104-112,  145-154  ;  or  Dr.  Hannah's  Courtly  /'t>its,pp.  ! 

154-173,  where  Dyer's  poem,  not  Brooke'.s,  is  treated  as  the  original.     While  this  ; 

'  deep-brauied  '  old  writer  (whom  Wordsworth  knew  how  to  value)  is  before  us,  he  may  j 

be  brought  imder  contribution  to  a  small  extent  here.     The  greater  number  of  the  | 

hundred  and  ten  pieces — '  Sonnets '  as  their  author  calls  them — composing  the  Cielica,  \ 

of  which  the  three  following  are  the  i6th,  17th,  and  88th  (misnumbered  87  in  old  copy),  1 

forfeit  all  rightto  that  denomination  by  their  informalities  of  structure  ;  but  they  have  j 
a  representative  value,  and  seem   to  supply  a  kind  of  link  between  the  Italian  form 

employed  by  his  friend  Sidney,  with  whom  they  were  '  written  in  familiar  exercise,'  '■ 

and  the  domestic  English  or  Shakspearian  type.  They  have  also,  as  Dr.  Grosart  notes,  J 

'all  that  belongs  to  the  Cumberland  word  "  sonn,"  which  means  to  think  deeply.'  1 

Fye  foolish  Earth,  thinke  you  the  heaven  wants  glory,  1 

Because  your  .shadowes  doe  your  selfe  benight? 

All's  darke  unto  the  blind;  let  them  be  sory ;  ; 

The  heavens  in  themselves  are  ever  bright. 
Fye  fond  De.sire,  thinke  you  that  Love  wants  glory. 
Because  your  shadowes  doe  your  selfe  benight? 

The  hopes  and  feares  of  lust,  may  make  men  sorie,  ■ 

But  Love  still  in  her  selfe  finds  her  delight. 

Then  Earth  stand  fast,  the  skye  that  you  benight  i 

Will  turne  againe,  and  so  restore  your  glory  ;  \ 

Desire  be  steady,  hope  is  your  delight,  '  1 

An  orbe  wherein  no  creature  can  be  sorie  ;  | 

Love  being  plac'd  above  these  middle  regions. 

Where  every  passion  virarres  it  selfe  with  legions.  \ 

Fulke  Greville,  Lord  Brooke.  \ 

Cynthia,  whose  glories  are  at  full  for  ever,  '  j 

Whose  beauties  draw  forth  teares,  and  kindle  fires,  .       I 

Fires  which  kindled  once  are  quenched  never  : 

So  beyond  hope  your  worth  beares  up  desires.  ' 

Why  cast  you  clouds  on  your  sweet-looking  eyes? 
Are  you  afraid  they  shew  me  too  much  pleasure? 
Strong  Nature  decks  the  grave  wherein  it  lyes  ; 
Excellence  can  never  be  exprest  in  measure. 

Are  you  afraid,  because  my  heart  adores  you,  • 

The  world  will  thinke  I  hold  Endymion's  place  ? 

Hippolytus,  sweet  Cynthia,  kneel'd  before  you,  1 

^  Yet  did  you  not  come  downe  to  kisse  his  face.  . 

'  Angells  enjoy  the  heavens' inward  quires :  1 

Starre-gazers  only  multiply  desires.  j 

Fulke  Cre2<ille,  Lord  Brooke.  i 


Notes  321 

and  as  noted  by  Mr.  Collier  from  Evordanus  Prince  of  Denmark, 
1605  {Biblio.  Acct.,  i,  264)  :  '  In  misery  there  is  no  greater  griefe 
than  to  call  to  minde  forepassed  pleasure.'  Keats  also  glances  at 
it  in  one  of  his  lesser  poems  ('  In  a  drear-nighted  December ') : 

'  But  were  there  ever  any 
Writhed  not  at  passed  joy  ?  ' — 

and  it  has  been  beautifully  woven  into  Thomas  Davidson's  song 
The  Auld  Ash  Tree  {Life  of  a  Scottish  Probationer,  ike,  2nd  ed. 
1878,  p.  69)  : 

'  Oh,  I  wad  fain  forget  them  a' ; 

Remembered  guid  but  deepens  ill, 
As  gleids  o'  licht  far  seen  by  nicht 
Mak'  the  near  mirk  but  mirker  still ; ' 

but  it  will  doubtless  be  identified  henceforth  with  him  who  has  at 
length  fixed  it  in  imperishable  English  verse  (Tennyson's  Locksley 
Hall) : 

'A  sorrow's  crown  of  sorrow  is  remembering  happier  things.' 
Elsewhere  (in  the  song  '  Sad  Damon  beeing  come  : '  Poetns,  1616, 
sig.  H)  Drummond  exclaims  pathetically  : 

'  O  !  that  the  Cause  which  doth  consume  our  Joy 
Remembrance  of  it  too  would  too  destroy  ! 
What  doth  this  Life  bestow 
But  Flowrs  on  Thornes  which  grow  ? 
Which  though  they  sometime  blandishing  delighte, 
Yet  afterwards  us  smite  ? 
And  if  the  rising  Sunne  them  faire  doth  see, 
That  Planet  setting,  too  beholdes  them  die.' 

The  sonnet  before  us — with  which  cp.  Petrarca's  85th,  'Avventuroso 
piu  d'altro  terreno' — is  addressed  to  William  Alexander,  Earl  of 
Sterline,  who  was  Secretary  of  State  for  Scotland  from  1626  to 
1640,  and  himself  a  poet  of  a  masculine  order.    Drummond  and  he 

When  as  Man's  life,  the  light  of  humane  lust. 

In  soacket  of  his  earthly  lanthorne  burnes. 

That  all  his  glory  unto  ashes  must  : 

And  generations  to  corruption  turnes  ; 

Then  fond  desires  that  onely  feare  their  end, 

Doe  vainly  wish  for  life,  but  to  amend. 

But  when  this  life  is  from  the  body  fled. 

To  see  it  selfe  in  that  eternal  glasse, 

Where  Time  doth  end,  and  thoughts  accuse  the  dead. 

Where  all  to  come  is  one  with  all  that  was  ; 

Then  living  men  aske  how  he  left  his  breath. 

That  while  he  lived  never  thought  of  death. 

Fulke  Greville,  Lord  Brooke, 

With  the  phrase  '  eternal  glasse '  in  this  last,  cp.  st.  58  of  his  Treatise  of  Religion 
(ed.  Grosart,  i,  258),  where  the  Bible  is  described  as  i 

'  that  eternal  glass 
Where  all  men's  souls  behold  the/ace  they  bring.' 


322  Notes 

S&Iilliam  ^rummorti).  i 

were  fast  friends  through  life,  and  called  each  other  by  the  pastoral 

names  of  Damon  and  Alexis  in  their  correspondence  and  poems.  i 

Besides  his  tragedies,  two  of  which  were  read  and  remembered  by  ; 
Shakspeare,  the  Earl  wrote  many  sonnets  and  other  short  lyrical 

pieces  in  which  Campbell  {Specimens,  p.  159,  ed.  1841)  might,  to  \ 

say  the  least,  have  found  something  more  than  mere  '  elegance  of  j 
expression,'  as  the  three  following  examples  will  show.    They  are 

the  loth,  33rd,  and  loyc  A  oi  Aurora  :  Containing  the  first  fancies  . 

of  the  Authors  youth,   William  Alexander  of  Menstrie,  1604: —  j 

I  sweare,  Aurora,  by  thy  starrie  eyes. 
And  by  those  golden  lockes  whose  locke  none  slips 
And  by  the  Corall  of  thy  rosie  lippes. 
And  by  the  naked  snowes  which  beautie  dyes  ; 
I  sweare  by  all  the  jewels  of  thy  mind. 
Whose  like  yet  never  worldly  treasure  bought. 
Thy  solide  judgement  and  thy  generous  thought,  ' 

Which  in  this  darkened  age  have  clearely  shin'd  : 
I  sweare  by  those,  and  by  my  spotlesse  love,  ; 

And  by  my  secret,  yet  most  fervent  fires,  I 

That  I  have  never  nurc'd  but  chast  desires,  "  1 

And  such  as  modestie  might  well  approve.  ■ 

Then  since  I  love  those  vertuous  parts  in  thee, 
Shouldst  thou  not  love  this  vertuous  mind  in  me  ?  | 

W.  Alexander,  Earl  of  Sterline.^  \ 

O  if  thou  knew'st  how  thou  thy  selfe  dost  harme. 

And  dost  prejudge  thy  blisse,  and  spoile  my  rest ; 

Then  thou  would'st  melt  the  yce  out  of  thy  brest,  \ 

And  thy  relenting  heart  would  kindly  warme. 

O  if  thy  pride  did  not  our  joyes  controule. 

What  world  of  loving  wonders  should'st  thou  see  !  ' 

For  if  I  saw  thee  once  transform'd  in  me,  \ 

Then  in  thy  bosome  I  would  poure  my  soule. 

Then  all  thy  thoughts  should  in  my  visage  shine  ;  '■ 

>  Cp.  Wither,  Son.  3  {Faire-Virtue,  The  Mistresse  0/  Phir Arete.     Written  by  \ 

'  Him-Sel/e,  1622,  sig.  K4) :  ; 

Faire,  since  thy  Virtues  my  affections  move,  j 

And  I  have  vowd,  my  purpose  is  to  joyne,  ' 
(In  an  eternall  Band  of  chastest  Love) 

Our  Soules,  to  make  a  Mariage  most  divine.  • 
Why  (thou  maist  thinke)  then,  seemeth  he  to  prize. 
An  outward  Beauties  fading  hew  so  much  ? 

Why  doth  he  read  such  Lectures  in  mine  eyes?  i 
And  often  strive  my  tender  palme  to  touch? 
Oh  pardon  my  presuming  :  For  I  sweare 

My  Love  is  soylSd  with  no  histftdl  spot  :  | 

Thy  Soules  perfections  through  those  vailes  appeare,  i 

And  I  halfe  faint  that  1  embrace  them  not.  ' 

No  foule  Desires  doth  make  thy  touches  sweet  :  ' 

But,  my  Soule  striveth  with  thy  Soule  to  meet.  • 

George  Wither.  \ 


Notes  •  323 

And  if  that  ought  mischanc'd,  thou  should'st  not  mone 
Nor  beare  the  burthen  of  thy  griefes  alone  ; 
No,  I  would  have  my  share  in  what  were  thine. 
And  whil'st  we  thus  should  make  our  sorrowes  one, 
This  happie  harmonie  would  make  them  none. 

IV.  Alexander,  Earl  of  Ster line} 

To  yeeld  to  those  I  cannot  but  disdaine, 

Whose  face  doth  but  entangle  foolish  hearts  ; 

It  is  the  beautie  of  the  better  parts 

With  which  I  mind  my  fancies  for  to  chaine. 

Those  that  have  nought  wherewith  mens  mindes  to  gaine, 

But  onely  curled  lockes  and  wanton  lookes. 

Are  but  like  fleeting  baites  that  have  no  hookes, 

Which  may  well  take,  but  cannot  well  retaine. 

He  that  began  to  yeeld  to  th'  outward  grace, 

And  then  the  treasures  of  the  mind  doth  prove  : 

He  who  as  't  were  was  with  the  maske  in  love, 

What  doth  he  thinke  when  as  he  sees  the  face  ? 

No  doubt  being  lim'd  by  th'  outward  colours  so. 

That  inward  worth  would  never  let  him  go. 

W.  Alexander,  Earl  of  Sterline. 

Here  too  may  be  presented  a  good  sonnet  by  another  contemporary 
Scottish  poet,  the  common  friend  of  Drummond  and  Alexander,  Sir 
Robert  Ayton  of  Kinaldie,  in  Fifeshire,  who  was  private  secretary 
to  James's  queen,  Anne  of  Denmark,  and  of  whose  friendship  for 
Ben  Jonson  there  is  a  brief  record  in  the  Hawthornden  Conversa- 
tiojis :  '  That  Sir  R.  Alton  loved  him  dearly.'  Author  of  a  number 
of  sonnets,  ^nd  of  some  very  beautiful  lyrics  not  in  sonnet-form, 
'  he  was,'  says  Professor  Masson,  '  perhaps  the  first  Scotchman  who 
wrote  verses  in  the  genuine  English  of  Spenser  and  his  contempo- 
raries.' I  might  refer  the  reader  to  a  recent  paper  on  this  poet  in 
the  London  Quarterly  Reviexu,  July,  1878.  Our  specimen  is  given 
from  his  Poems,  edited  by  Dr.  Charles  Rogers,  1871,  p.  73  : — 

ON     THE    LOSS    OF    HIS    MISTRESS. 

Lo  !  how  the  sailor  in  a  stormy  night 

Wails  and  complains  till  he  the  star  perceive 

Whose  situation  and  assured  height 

Should  guide  him  through  the  strong  and  wat'ry  wave. 

As  many  motives,  wretched  soul,  I  have 

For  to  regret,  as  few  as  to  rejoice, 

In  seeing  all  things,  once  this  sight  I  crave. 

Since  I  the  load-star  of  my  life  did  lose, — 

And  what  is  worse,  amidst  those  many  woes, 

Amidst  my  pain,  which  passes  all  compare, 

1  Mr.  Palgrave  transposes  the  thy  and  ;;y  of  1.  9,  printing  thus  (Golden  Treasury, 

p.  15} : — 

'  Then  all  my  thoughts  should  in  thy  visage  shine.' 


324 


Notes 


No  help,  no  hope,  no  comfort,  no  repose, 
No  sun  appears  to  clear  these  clouds  of  care, 
Save  this,  that  fortune  neither  may  nor  dare 
Make  my  mishaps  more  hapless  than  they  are. 

Sir  Robert  Ayton. 

6i — cxxi.  Cp.  Petrarca's  296th  Sonnet,  '  Dolce  mio  caro,'  &c. 
62  — cxxii.  ramage  —  wild-song,  wood-song  :  see  Blount's  Glossographia 
and  Nares's  Glossary,  s.v.  11.  Cp.  Dorus's  song  in  the  Arcadia 
referred  to  under  cxix,  p.  318  :  '  Each  sight  [  =  sigh]  draws  on  a 
thought.'  12.  Cp.  Cowley's  use  of  a  similar  i^ea.  I^Tke  Mistress, 
Spring,  2,  p.  6,  ed.  1681) : 

'  How  could  it  be  so  fair,  and  you  away  ? 
How  could  the  Trees  be  beauteous.  Flowers  so  gay? 
Could  they  remember  but  last  year 
How  you  did  Them,  they  you,  delight. 
The  sprouting  leaves  which  saw  you  here, 
And  called  their  Fellows  to  the  sight, 
Would,  looking  round  for  the  same  sight  in  vain, 
Creep  back  into  their  silent  Barks  again.' 

and  Shelley's  exquisite  expansion  in  the  lines  To  a  Lady,  with  a 
Guitar.  When  composing  this  sonnet  Drummond  may  as  usual  have 
had  Sidney  in  his  thoughts  {Arcadia,  Lib.  iii,  p.  356,  ed.  1598) : 
'  My  Lute,  within  thy  selfe  thy  tunes  enclose, 
Thy  mistresse  song  is  now  a  sorows  crie  ; ' 
but  its  sombre  beauty  is  all  his  own. 

cxxiii.  thy  mantle  bright  with  flowers.  Cp.  the  opening  of  Spen- 
ser's 70th  Son.  (xx,  p.  1 1),  to  which,  however,  it  would  be  too  much 
to  say  that  Drummond  was  indebted  primarily  for  the  image.  Among 
his  posthumous  papers  there  is  one  containing  brief  notes  of  his 
reading — written,  according  to  Masson,  mainly  between  1613  and 
1616 — in  which  he  speaks  thus  disparagingly  of  the  Amoretti  :  '  As 
to" that  which  Spenser  calleth  his  Amoretti,  I  am  not  of  their  opinion 
who  think  them  his  ;  for  they  are  so  childish,  that  it  were  not  well 
to  give  them  so  honourable  a  father '  {Conversations ,7i.%  before,  p.  50). 
1-5.  turn'st—re\Mx\\i\..  The  sonnet  immediately  succeeding  this 
contains  some  fine  verses  {Poejus,  1616,  sig.  H3)  : 

What  doth  it  serve  to  see  Sunnes  burning  Face, 

And  Skies  enamell'd  with  both  the  Indies  Gold, 

Or  Moone  at  Night  in  jetlie  Charriot  roU'd, 

And  all  the  Glorie  of  that  starrie  Place  ? 

What  doth  it  serve  Earths  Beautie  to  behold — 

The  Mountaines  Pride,  the  Meadowes  flowrie  Grace, 

The  statelie  Comelinesse  of  Forrests  old. 

The  Sport  of  Flouds  which  would  themselves  embrace  ? 


Notes  325 

PACE  , 

What  doth  it  serve  to  heare  the  Sylvans  Songs, 
The  wanton  Mearle,  the  Nightingallcs  sad  Straines, 
Which  in  darke  Shades  seeme  to  deplore  my  Wrongs  ? 
For  what  doth  serve  all  that  this  World  containes, 
Sith  shee  for  whome  those  once  to  mee  were  deare 
No  Part  of  them  can  have  now  with  mee  heere  ? ' 

57-62 — cxii-cxxiii.   From  Poems  :  By  William  Drummond,  of  Ilaw- 
tJionie-denne.      The  Second  Impression.     Edinburgh,  1616. 

63 — cxxiv.  fabulous  :  '  fabling  '  (1623). 

cxxv.  By  darkness  would :  '  Hastes  darkely  to'  (1623). 

64 — cxxvi,  I.    So  the  admirable  Samuel  Daniel,  in  a  tract  which, 

though  wanting  in  this  instance,  ordinarily  forms  part  of  one  of 

the  volumes  presented  by  Drummond   to  his  College  (Works, 

1602  :  A  Defence  of  Byrne,  sig.  G6) :   '  It  is  notbookes,  but  onely 

that  great  booke  of  the  world,  and  the  all-overspreading  grace  of 

heaven  that  makes  men  truely  judiciall.'     And  George   Wither 

{Withers  Motto,  1621,  sig.  D) : 

'  For  many  bookes  I  care  not  ;  and  my  store 
Might  now  suffice  me,  though  I  had  no  more 
Then  Gods  two  Testaments,  and  therewithall 
That  mighty  Volume,  which  the  World  we  call.' 

13.  our  minds  do  tnuse  :  '  we  stay  our  Mindes '  (1623).  9-14.  Drum- 
mond seems  to  have  so  thoroughly  steeped  his  mind  in  Sidney's 
sweets  that  he  probably  reproduced  them  sometimes  unconsciously 
to  himself.     Cp.  A  strop  hel  and  Stella,  11  : 

'    '  In  truth,  O  Love,  with  what  a  boyish  kind 
Thou  doest  proceed  in  thy  most  serious  wayes  : 
That  when  the  heav'n  to  thee  his  best  displayes. 
Yet  of  that  best  thou  leav'st  the  best  behinde. 
For  like  a  child  that  some  faire  booke  doth  find, 
With  guilded  leaves  or  colourd  Velume  playes, 
Or  at  the  most  on  some  fine  picture  stayes. 
But  never  heeds  the  fruit  of  writers  mind  ; 
So  when  thou  saw'st  in  Natures  cabinet 
Stella,"  &c. 
The  present  sonnet  is  wanting  in  TurnbuU's  edition  of  Drummond 
(1856). -_ 

1  1.  both  the  Indies  :  'the  Indian'  (1656).  10.  Drummond's  association  of  these 
•Sylvans'  recalls  The  Merle  and  the  Nyclititigaill  of  grand  old  Dunbar,  wherein 
occurs  one  of  the  truest  notes  that  ever  came  from  poet's  lips  (Poems,  ed.  Laing, 
1834,  i,  217) :  ,,.,,, 

'  Nevir  suetar  noys  wes  hard  with  levand  man 
Na  maid  this  mirry  gentill  Nychtingaill  ; 
Hir  sound  went  with  the  rever  as  it  ran 

Out  throw  the  fresche  and  flureist  lusty  vaill : 
O  Merle  !  quoth  scho,  O  fule  !  stynt  of  thy  taill, 
For  in  thy  song  gud  sentens  is  thair  none. 

For  boith  is  tynt,  the  tyme  and  the  travaill 
Of  every  Luve  bot  upone  God  allone.' 


326  Notes 

SStUImm  ^rummoitb. 

PAGE 

64 — CXXVII.  blossoms  :  '  Locusts' ;  yoimg  :  '  there  '  ;  marble  :  '  flintie  ' 
(1623).  In  this  arresting  sonnet  Drummond  himself  is,  uncon- 
sciously, the  herald  of  a  king, — of  Song.  On  reading  it  we  inevi- 
tably bethink  us  of  the  greater  than  he  who  is  at  hand  ;  and  it  has 
always  appeared  to  me  one  of  the  felicities  of  arrangement  visible 
in  every  page  of  Mr,  Palgrave's  Golden  Treasury  that  Drummond 
is  there  presented  in  this  relation  to  Milton.  But  even  before 
Drummond  a  stem  Voice  had  been  heard  crying  in  Scottish  poetry, 
— one  with  which  we  have  proof  that  he  was  not  unacquainted,  and 
of  which  indeed  the  influence  is  quite  apparent  in  his  verse  :  that, 
namely,  of  Alexander  Montgomery,  whose  sonnets  are  not  un- 
worthy of  the  author  of  The  Cherrie  a?id  the  Slae  (1597).  How 
like  Drummond  is  this  solemn  adjuration 

TO   M.   P.    GALLOWAY. 
Sound,  Galloway,  the  trompet  of  the  Lord  ; 
The  blissit  brethren  sail  obey  thy  blast  ; 
Then  thunder  out  the  thretnings  of  the  word 
Aganst  the  wicked  that  auay  ar  cast. 
Pray  that  the  faithfuU  in  the  fight  stand  fast. 
Suppose  the  Divill  the  wickeds  hairts  obdure, 
Zit  perseveir,  as  in  thy  preichins  past. 
For  to  discharge  thy  conscience  and  cure. 
Quhat  Justice  sauld  !  vhat  pilling  of  the  pure  ! 
Quhat  bluidy  murthers  ar  for  gold  forgivin  ! 
God  is  not  sleipand,  thoght  he  tholde,  be  sure. 
Cry  out,  and  he  shall  heir  the  from  the  Hevin  ; 
And  wish  the  king,  his  court,  and  counsell  clenge. 
Or  then  the  Lord  will,  in  his  wrath,  revenge. 

A  lexander  Montgomery. ' 

This  '  Baptist '  sonnet  belongs  to  a  little  group  of  Scriptural  poems 
from  which  I  take  the  two  following  sonnets :  old-fashioned  and 
quaint  a  little,  may  be,  but  truly  amongst  '  the  sweetest  anthems 
that  have  reached  the  skies.'  {Flowres of  Sion,  ed.  1630,  pp.  5-6). 
They  are  the  only  '  Flowres '  of  Drunimond's  selected  by  Mr. 
Emerson  for  his  charming  anthology,  Parnassus  (Boston,  1S75). 


»  The  Poems  of  Alexander  Montgomery  :  ■with  Biographical  Notices,  by  David 
Irving,  LL.D.  Edin.,  1821,  p.  66.  The  real  editor  of  the  volume  was  the  late  Mr. 
Laing  ;  and  the  most  of  the  miscellaneous  poems,  including  the  sonnets,  are  printed 
therein  for  the  first  time  from  a  manuscript  in  which  alone  they  are  supposed  to  exist, 
part  of  Drummond's  munificent  gift  of  books  and  MSS.  to  h\?,  Anna  Mater.  A  con- 
siderable selection  of  the  sonnets  had  been  given  in  Dr.  Irving's  earlier  work,  The 
Lives  0/  the  Scoiish  Poets,  &c.,  2  vols.,  Edin.,  1804  ;  and  in  Sibbald's  Chronicle  0/ 
Scottish  Poetry,  &c.,4  vols.,  Edin.,  1802.  It  occasions  some  surprise  that  a  poet  who 
formerly  received  special  attention  at  Dr.  Irving's  hands  .should  be  all  but  ignored 
in  his  posthumous  work,  The  History  0/  Scotish  Poetry,  Edited  by  John  Aitken 
Carlyle,  i86i. 


Notes  327 

FOR  THE  NATIl'ITIE  OF  OUR  LORD. 
THE   ANGELS. 

Runne  (Sheepheards)  run  where  Bethleme  blest  appeares  ; 
Wee  bring  the  best  of  newes,  bee  not  dismay'd— 
A  Saviour  tliere  is  borne,  more  olde  than  yeares, 
Amidst  Heavens  rolling  hights  this  Earth  who  stay'd  : 
In  a  poore  Cotage  Inn'd,  a  Virgine  Maide 
A  weakling  did  him  beare,  who  all  upbeares  ; 
There  is  hee  poorelie  swadl'd,  in  Manger  lai'd, 
To  whom  too  narrow  Swadlings  are  our  Spheares  : 
Runne  (Sheepheards)  runne,  and  solemnize  his  Birth  ; 
This  is  that  Night,  no,  Day  growne  great  with  Blisse, 
In  which  the  power  of  Sathan  broken  is  ; 
In  Heaven  bee  glorie.  Peace  unto  the  Earth. 
Thus  singing  through  the  Aire  the  Angels  swame, 
And  Cope  of  Starres  re-echoed  the  same.' 

THE    SHEEPHEARDS. 

O  than  the  fairest  Day,  thrice  fairer  Night ! 

Night  to  best  Dayes  in  which  a  Sunne  doth  rise, 

Of  which  that  golden  Eye,  which  cleares  the  Skies, 

Is  but  a  sparkling  Ray,  a  Shadow  light : 

And  blessed  yee  (in  sillie  Pastors  sight) 

Milde  Creatures,  in  whose  warme  Cribe  now  lyes 

That  Heaven-sent  Yongling,  holie-Maide -borne  Wight, 

Midst,  end,  beginning  of  our  Prophesies  : 

Blest  Cotage  that  hath  Flo'wres  in  Winter  spred  ; 

Though  withered,  blessed  Grasse,  that  hath  the  grace 

To  decke  and  bee  a  Carpet  to  tliat  Place. 

Thus  sang,  unto  the  Soundes  of  oaten  Reed, 

Before  the  Babe,  the  Sheepheards  bow'd  on  knees  ; 

And  Springs  ranne  Nectar,  Honey  dropt  from  Trees.^ 

Passing  to  our  next  selected  '  Flowre,'  some  profoundly  thought- 
ful and  impressive  verse  challenges  notice.  I  give  two  of  the 
sonnets  (ibid.,  pp.  22-24) : — 

1  Heavens  rolling  hights  :  'the  rolling  Heaven;'  is  hee  poorelie  swaclVd  :  'he 
is  swadl'd  in  Cloathes'  (1623).  1-9.  Masson  notes  the  echo  in  Milton  {On  the  Morn- 
ing 0/  Christ's  Nativity,  24  :  Poems,  1645,  p.  2)  : 

'  See  how  from  far  upon  the  Eastern  rode 
The  Star-led  Wisards  haste  with  odours  sweet : 
O  run,  prevent  them  with  thy  humble  ode, 
And  lay  it  lowly  at  his  blessed  feet.' 

"  I  have  ventured  to  supply  the  title  in  this  instance  for  the  sake  of  uniformity. 
It  may  be  observed  that  these  Floxvres  of  Sion  titles  appear  in  the  1630  edition  only, 
and  are  placed,  not  over  the  respective  poems,  but  in  .-J  Table  of  the  Hynmes  and 
Sonnetes,  imth  their  Argujiicnts,  at  the  end  of  the  volume.  Hence  perhaps  the 
'  For  '  with  which  they  occasionally  begin.  14.  One  of  Drummond's  frequent  recol- 
lections of  Daniel,  whom  he  read  much,  and  discriminatingly  '  censured  '  as  '  for 
sweetness  in  ryming  second  to  none.'  Cp.  the  lovely  '  Pastorall  (Delia,  p.  30,  ed. 
(1602)  ; 

'  O  happie  golden  Age  ! 

Not  for  that  Rivers  ranne 

With  streames  of  milke,  and  hunny  dropt  from  trees,'  &c. 


328  Notes 


PAGE 


MAN'S  KNOWLEDGE.  IGNORANCE  IN  THE 

MISTERIES   OF    GOD. 

Beneath  a  sable  vaile,  and  Shadowes  deepe, 

Of  Unaccessible  and  dimming  light, 

In  Silence  ebane  Clouds  more  blacke  than  Night, 

The  Worlds  great  King  his  secrets  hidde  doth  keepe  : 

Through  those  Thicke  Mistes  v/hen  any  Mortall  Wight 

Aspires,  with  halting  pace,  and  Eyes  that  weepe. 

To  pore,  and  in  his  Misteries  to  creepe. 

With  Thunders  hee  and  Lightnings  Wastes  their  Sight. 

O  Sunne  invisible,  that  dost  abide 

Within  thy  bright  abysmes,  most  faire,  most  darke. 

Where  with  thy  proper  Rayes  thou  dost  thee  hide  ; 

O  ever-shining,  never  full-seen  marke. 

To  guide  mee  in  Lifes  Night,  thy  light  mee  show  : 

The  more  I  search  of  thee,  the  lesse  I  know.' 

THE  COURT  OF  TRUE  HONOUR. 

Why  (worldlings)  do  ye  trust  fraile  honours  dreams, 

And  leane  to  guilted  Glories  which  decay  ? 

Why  doe  yee  toyle  to  registrate  your  Names 

On  ycie  Pillars,  which  soone  melt  away  ? 

True  Honour  is  not  heere  :  that  place  it  clames, 

Where  blacke-brow'd  Night  doth  not  exile  the  Day, 

Nor  no  farre-shining  Lamp  dives  in  the  Sea, 

But  an  eternall  Sunne  spreades  lasting  Beames  ; 

There  it  attendeth  you,  where  spotlesse  Bands 

Of  Spirits  stand  gazing  on  their  Soveraigne  Blisse, 

Where  yeeres  not  hold  it  in  their  canckring  hands. 

But  who  once  noble,  ever  noble  is. 

Looke  home,  lest  hee  your  weakned  Wit  make  thrall, 

Who  Edens  foolish  Gardner  earst  made  fall.^ 

65 — CXXViii.  solitary  :  '  solitare,  yet '  (1616).    ^Ntinquam  minus  solus, 

'  King:  '  IMinde '; /or^  .•  'prye  '  (1623). 

J  guilted  :  '  guilded  '  ;  On  ycie  Pillars:  'In  ycie  Columnes'  (1616).  farre- 
shinitig  Lamp  =  planet — as  in  his  Cypresse  Grove  (Flowres  of  Sion,  p.  85):  '  But 
(my  Soule)  what  aileth  thee,  to  bee  thus  backward  and  astonished  at  the  remem- 
brance of  Death,  sith  it  doth  not  reach  Thee,  more  than  Darknesse  doth  those  farre- 
shining  Lampes  above  ?  '     8-12.  Cp.  his  Shadow  0/  the  Judgement  (ibid.,  p.  47)  : 

'About  his  Throne 
(Like  to  those  Beames  Days  golden  Lamp  hath  on) 
Angelike  Splendors  glance,  more  swift  than  ought 
Reveal'd  to  sence,  nay,  than  the  winged  Thought, 
His  will  to  practise  :   here  doe  Seraphines 
Burne  with  immortall  love,  there  Cherubines, 
With  other  noble  people  of  the  Lizht, 
As  Eaglets  in  the  Sunne,  delight  their  Sight.' 

See  a  remark  on  this  sonnet  under  cxxviii.  Some  may  consider  that  its  closing 
couplet  alone  were  sufficient  to  disqualify  it  for  an  anthology  ;  but  the  Editor  will  be 
content  with  the  approval  of  those  to  whom  the  noble  and  inspiring  thought  and  per- 
fect simplicity  of  expression  of  the  nth  and  12th  verses  fully  compensate  any  medi- 
ocrity elsewhere. 


i 


Notes  329 

'AGE 

quam  czim  solus,'  says  Cowley  in  his  charming  Essay  Of  Solitude 
(Works,  ed.  1700,  p.  83),  'is  now  become  a  very  vulgar  Saying. 
Every  Man,  and  almost  every  Boy,  for  these  seventeen  hundred 
years,  has  had  it  in  his  mouth.  But  it  was  at  first  spoken  by  the 
Excellent  Scipio,  who  was  without  question  a  most  Eloquent  and 
Witty  Person,  as  well  as  the  most  Wise,  most  Worthy,  most  Happy, 
and  the  Greatest  of  all  Mankind.'  hoarse  :  '  soft '  (1616);  evil  =  ill 
(as  under  xxxiii,  p.  257) ;  embalmed :  '  perfum'd  ' ;  new-born  :  'doe 
the';  troubles:  '  Falshoods ' ;  harmless:  'silent'  (1616).  This 
sonnet  (and  '  Why,  worldlings,'  under  cxxvii)  had  already  ap- 
peared, with  the  slight  variations  specified,  in  that  portion  of  the 
Poems,  1616,  entitled  Urania,  or  Spirituall  Poems.  It  and  cxix 
may  be  compared  with  CCXLVIII  (p.  126)  and  another  of  Lord 
Thurlow's  sonnets  in  praise  of  the  sylvan  life  {Poems  on  Several 
Occasions,  2nd  ed.,  1813,  p.  199). 
65 — cxxix.  This  sonnet  is  partly  an  echo  of  Petrarca's  317th,  '  Vago 
augeletto,'  &c.  10-14.  'aQa.AlQy  {Select  Beauties  of  Ancient  English 
Poetry,  1810,  ii,  125)  notes  the  parallel  in  Walton's  Compleat  Angler, 
1653,  chap,  i  (5th  ed.,  1676,  p.  11) :  '  But  the  Nightingale  (another 
of  my  Airy  Creatures)  breaths  such  sweet  loud  musick  out  of  her 
little  instrumental  throat, that  it  might  make  mankiiid  to  think  Mira- 
cles are  not  ceased.  He  that  at  midnight  (when  the  very  labourer 
sleeps  securely)  should  hear  (as  I  have  very  often)  the  clear  airs,  the 
sweet  descants,  the  natural  rising  and  falling,  the  redoubling  and  re- 
doubling of  her  voice,"  might  well  be  lifted  above  earth,  and  say  : 
Lord,  what  Musick  hast  thou  provided  for  the  Saints  in  Heaven, 
when  thou  aflordest  bad  men  such  musick  on  Earth  ! '  Dr.  Nathan 
Drake  {Mornings  in  Spring,  1828,  i,  272)  has  described  Drum- 
mond's  sonnet  as  '  a  strain  of  hallowed  gratitude  which  seems  worthy 
of  ascending  to  the  throne  of  heaven.'  We  had  occasion  (p.  326)  to 
bring  Drummond  and  Montgomery  together.  It  is  interesting  to 
find  them  again  associated,  and  in  so  pretty  a  theme  as  this  of  tlie 
nightingale  and  her  song  (Montgomery's  Poems,  as  before,  p.  88): 

Suete  Nichtingale  !  in  holene  grene  that  han[ts,] 
To  sport  thy  self,  and  speciall  in  the  spring  ; 


1  Cp.  kindred  descriptions  in  the  contest  between  the  lutanist  and  the  nightingale 
(from  Strada's  original)  in  Ford's  Lovers  Melancholy  (1629)  and  Crashaw's  Mustek's 
Duell  (1646).  In'daintiness,  vigour,  and  quaint  fancy,  they  are  all  surpassed  by  the 
anonymous  author—'  H.  A.'  (=  A.  Hawkins  ?),  an  English  Catholic— of  a  little  prose 
volume  published  at  Paris  in  16^-},  Partkeneia  Sacra,  or  The  Mysterious  and  Deli- 
cious Garden  0/  the  Sacred  Parthenes  (p.  138).  Very  possibly  both  Walton  and 
Crashawsaw  the  book,  especially  the  latter,  being  a  fellow-churchman  of  the  author's. 
See  an  article  on  and  extracts  from  it,  under  the  heading  '  Flowers  from  a  Neglected 
Garden,'  pp.  58-65,  Deliciae  Literariae :  A  New  Volume  of  Table-Talk  [by  Dr. 
Joseph  Robertson],  1840. 


330  Notes 

PAGE 

Thy  chivring  chirlis,  vhilks  chan  [ginglie  thou  chants,] 

Maks  all  the  roches  round  about  the  ring  ; 

Vhilk  slaiks  my  sorou,  so  to  heir  the  sing, 

And  lights  my  louing  langour  at  the  leist  ; 

Zit  thoght  thou  sees  not,  sillie,  saikles  thing  ! 

The  piercing  pykis  brods  at  thy  bony  breist, 

Euin  so  am  I,  by  plesur  lykuyis  preist. 

In  gritest  danger  vhair  I  most  delyte  : 

But  since  thy  song,  for  shoring,  hes  not  ceist, 

Suld  feble  I,  for  feir,  my  conqueis  quyt  ? 

Na,  na, — I  love  the,  freshest  Phoenix  fair, 

In  beuty,  birth,  in  bounty  but  compair. 

Alexander  Montgomery. ' 

66 — cxxx.  cruel:  ' (shamelesse) ' ;  so  cannot:  'can  not  so'  (1623). 
13-14.  If,  as  we  have  seen,  Drummond  was  acquainted  with 
Shakspeare's  Sonnets,  there  need  be  no  difficulty  in  tracing  this 
couplet  to  its  fountainhead — Lix,  13-14,  p.  30: 

'  For  thy  sweet  love  remembered  such  wealth  brings. 
That  then  I  scorn  to  change  my  state  with  kings.' 

'  holene^=  holly.  The  words  in  brackets  are  supplied  from  conjecture,  the  MS. 
having  been  mutilated  by  the  binder.  Montgomery's  was  a  name  to  invoke  with  in 
Drummond's  day.  Among  the  specimens  from  the  sonnets  and  other  poems  of  his 
contemporary,  Sir  William  Moore,  of  Rowallan  (author  of  The  True  Criicijixe  /or 
True  Catholickes,  Edin.,  1629,  to  which  Drummond  prefixed  a  daintily-touched  com- 
mendatory sonnet),  given  in  Thomas  Lyle's  Ancient  Ballads  and  Songs,  &c.,  Lond. 
and  Glasgow,  1827,  there  are  some  lines  in  which  Rowallan  describes  his  own  muse 
as  one 

'  quhich  noght  doth  challenge  worthy  fame. 
Save  from  Montgomery  sche  her  birth  doth  clayme  ; ' 

and  printed  with    them   Tun  Sonets  sent  by  iny  Freind,  A.  S.,  two  remarkably 
spirited  poems,  in  the  second  of  which  he  is  thus  charged  : 

'  Sprang  thou  from  Maxwell  and  Montgomeries  muse 

To  let  our  poets  perisch  in  the  West? 

No,  no  !  brave  youth,  continow  in  thy  kynd  ; 

No  sueitar  subject  sail  thy  Muses  fynd  ! ' 
It  has  been  conjectured  by  Fullarton,  the  editor  of  the  section  of  Lyle's  book  in 
which  these  sonnets  occur,  that  the  initials  A.  S.  were  those  of  Alexander  Sempill,  a 
connexion  of  the  Sempills  of  Beltrees,  who  has  a  sonnet,  similarly  constructed,  m  Sir 
James  Sempill's  Pack-Man's  Paternoster,  1669  {Poems  of  the  Sempills  0/  Beltrees. 
edited  by  James  Paterson,  1849,  p.  11)  ;  but  that  would  require  confirmation.  As  the 
first  of  the  Tua  Sonets  is  not  only  spirited,  but  beautiful,  and  contains  an  early  tri- 
bute to  a  river  which  carries  poetry  '  in  the  mention,'  I  subjoin  it  here  ; 

Thou  kno's,  brave  gallant,  that  our  Scottich  braines 

Have  ay  bein  England's  equals  every  way  ; 

Quhair  als  rair  muse,  and  martiall  myndis  remaines, 

With  als  renouned  records  to  this  day. 

Thoght  we  be  not  enrol'd  so  rich  as  they, 

Zit  have  we  wits  of  worth  enrich'd  more  rare  : 

As  for  thair  Sidneyes  science,  quhich  they  say 

Surpasseth  all  in  his  Arcadian  air, — 

Cum,  I  have  found  our  westerne  feelds  als  fair  ; 

Go  thou  to  work,  and  I  schall  be  thy  guyde. 

And  schew  the  of  a  sueitar  subject  thair — 

Borne  Beuties  wonder  on  the  banks  of  Clyd  I 

Philocle  and  Pamela,  those  sueit  twain, 

Quho  lake  hot  thee  to  eternize  thair  name. 

A.S, 


Notes  3^ 


I 


PAGE 

But  he  had  Daniel  also  in  his  library  {Works,  1602,  fol.  42)  : 

Other  then  what  he  is  he  would  not  bee, 

Nor  chaunge  his  state  with  him  tliat  Scepters  weildes.' 

This  noble  sonnet,  of  Miltonic  grandeur  and  power,  anticipates 
Coleridge's  sublime  consolation,  that  notwithstanding  he  had  been 
through  a  large  portion  of  his  life  a  sufferer,  '  sorely  afflicted  with 
bodily  pains,  languors,  and  manifold  infirmities,'  his  intellect  had 
ever  remained  unclouded  ;  or,  as  in  the  Table  Talk  it  is  recorded  : 
'  For  one  mercy  I  owe  thanks  beyond  all  utterance, — that,  with  all 
my  gastric  and  bowel  distempers,  my  head  hath  ever  been  like  the 
head  of  a  mountain,  in  blue  air  and  sunshine.'  I  cull  one  more 
(the  last)  of  these  sacred  sonnet-'  Flowres  '  (ibid.,  p.  28) : 

THE    BLESSEDNESSE    OF    FAITHFULL    SOULES 

B'/    DEATH. 

Let  us  each  day  enure  our  selves  to  dye. 

If  this  (and  not  our  Feares)  be  tniely  Death — 

Above  the  Circles  both  of  Hope  and  Faith 

With  faire  immortall  pinniones  to  flie  ; 

If  this  be  Death— our  best  Part  to  untie, 

(By  ruining  the  Jaile)  from  Lust  and  Wrath, 

And  every  drowsie  languor  heere  beneath 

It  turning  deniz'd  Citizen  of  Skie  ; 

To  have  more  knowledge  than  all  Bookes  containe, 

All  Pleasures  even  surmounting  wishing  Powre, 

The  fellowship  of  Gods  immortall  Traine, 

And  these  that  Time  nor  force  shall  er'e  devour  : 

If  this  be  Death,  what  Joy,  what  golden  care 

Of  Life,  ,can  witli  Deaths  ouglinesse  compare  ? ' 

63-66 — cxxiv-cxxx.  From  the  second,  or  1630  impression  oi  Flowres 
of  Sioii:  by  William  Drummond  of  Hawthonie-denne.  To  which 
is  adjoyned  his  Cypresse  Grove.  [Eden-Bourgh]  1623."  Following 
the  Cypresse  Grove  in  both  editions  are  several  short  poems,  among 
them  this  sonnet  to  his  friend  Sir  William  Alexander,  '  the  pathos 
of  which,'  observes  Professor  Masson,  '  and  its  autobiographic  pre- 
cision have  made  it  oftener  quoted  in  sketches  of  Drummond  than 
any  other  : ' — 

*  deniz'd,  i.e.,  denizened  =  naturalized — as  in  Sidney,  xxvii,  8,  p.  14.  With  1.  9  cp. 

Sh^Wey  CIo  a  Skylark) :  „  l         „ 

'  Better  than  all  treasures 

That  in  books  are  found.' 

^  These  two  editions  show  interesting  variations  in  the  text,  and  as  it  is  just  a 
question  whether  the  later  readings  were  always  improvements,  I  have  given  the 
results  of  a  collation.  Throughout  the  copy  of  the  first  edition  '  Giiien  to  the  Colledge 
of  King  James  in  EdenbroiSgh  by  the  Author,  1624,'  narrow  slips  of  paper  with  the 
1630  readings  printed  thereon  have  in  many  instances  been  neatly  pasted  over  the 
original  ones,  apparently  by  the  poet  himself. 


332  Notes 

PAGE 

TO    S.     W.    A. 
Thougli  I  have  twice  beene  at  the  Doores  of  Death, 
And  twice  found  slioote  those  Gates  wliich  ever  mourne, 
This  but  a  lightning  is,  Truce  tane  to  Breath  ; 
For  late  borne  Sorrowes  augure  fleete  returne. 
Amidst  thy  sacred  Cares  and  courtlie  Toyles, 
Alexis,  when  thou  shalt  heare  v\'andring  Fame 
Tell  Death  hath  triumph'd  o're  my  mortall  Spoyles, 
And  that  on  Earth  I  am  but  a  sad  Name  ; 
If  thou  e're  helde  mee  deare,  by  all  our  Love, 
By  all  that  Blisse,  those  Joyes  Heaven  heere  us  gave, 
I  conjure  Thee,  and  by  the  Maides  of  Jove, 
To  grave  this  short  Remembrance  on  my  Grave  : 
Heere  Damon  lyes,  whose  Songes  did  some-time  grace 
The  murmuring  Eske  ;  may  Roses  shade  the  place. 

66 — cxxxi.  From  Poems,  by  that  most  Famous  Wit,  William  Drum, 
mond of  Hawthornden.  London:  1656.  This  sonnet — with  that 
on  The  Baptist  finely  exemplifying  Drummond's  native  strength, 
freed  from  Petrarcan  bands — will  recall  more  than  one  of  Shak- 
speare's  thoughtfullest  utterances  in  like  form.  It  and  another 
•  among  the  posthumous  Aliscellaiiies,  beginning  '  All  good  hath  left 
this  age,'  possess  peculiar  biographic  and  historic  interest,  being 
referable  to  the  last  year  of  Drummond's  life, when,  political  events 
having  culminated  in  the  awful  tragedy  at  Whitehall,  the  poet,  a 
staunch  and  sincere  Royalist,  had  in  consequence  fallen  into  a  state 
of  deep  and  settled  despondency,  which  it  is  difficult  to  regard  as 
altogether  unconnected  *with  his  death.  I  may  note  that  the  word 
Ply  in  1.  8,  very  distinctly  '  Plye  '  in  the  Hawthornden  MSS.  {Ex. 
Lib.  Anti.  Soci.  Scot.,  vol.  x),  and  correctly  printed  by  Phillips,  is 
unwarrantably  altered  to  '  Fly  '  in  the  folio  of  1711,  and  also  in  the 
sumptuous  quarto  edited  for  the  Maitland  Club  in  1832  by  Lord 
Dundrennan  and  Dr.  Irving,  who  profess  to  follow  the  original  edi- 
tions. Drummond  seems  to  have  bestowed  even  more  than  his  usual 
pains  on  the  sonnet, there  being  several  tentative  drafts  of  it  through- 
out the  MSS.  In  one  of  these  (vol.  x,  fol.  13)  the  line  runs 
'  Are  like  a  feather  set  to  stoi'me  and  wind.' 

67 — cxxxii.  '  It  would  have  been  very  gratifying  to  .have  been  able  to 
ascertain  on  what  Poem  this  very  beautiful  Sonnet  was  written.  For 
solemn  grandeur,  it  may  be  compared  with  the  best  of  Milton's  son- 
nets ;  and  the  mention  of  the  "  Sacred  Band  "  may  suggest  to  the 
Reader  his  fine  words, 

"  And  the  repeated  air 
Of  sad  Electra's  Poet  had  the  power 
To  save  the  Athenian  walls  from  ruin  bare."  ' 


Notes  333 

These  words  are  from  a  Paper  read  by  the  late  Mr.  Laing  before  the ' 
Society  of  Scottish  Antiquaries,  I4lh  ^January,  1828  [Archicologia 
Scotica,  iv,  1831,  102)  ;  and,  as  he  informed  me  not  long  before  his 
death,  no  further  light  was  ever  thrown  on  the  subject.  Mr.  Laing 
recalled  a  conversation  with  Wordsworth  on  the  Hawthornden  '  treasure- 
trove,'  when  the  poet  made  particular  enquiry  regarding  this  sonnet, 
which  he  greatly  admired. 

fiftii Ilium  IJi'Dfnnc. 

PAGE 

67— cxxxiii. — The  3rd  of  a  group  of  fourteen  remarkable  sonnets  of 
the  native  English  type,  entitled  '  Cselia,'  by  the  poet  of  Britannia's 
Pastorals  and  The  Shepheard's  Pipe,  whose  collected  works  were 
edited  by  Mr.  W.  C.  Hazlitt  in  1868-9  (2  vols.  4to).  '  Perhaps,' 
says  Mr.  Hazlitt,  in  reference  to  the  '  Cselia,'  '  on  the  whole,  of  all 
Browne's  minor  poems  these  may  be  regarded  as  the  best,  whether 
■  we  regard  their  harmony  of  versification,  command  of  language, 
chastity  of  style  and  sentiment,  or  fervent  sincerity  of  tone.'  I 
subjoin  the  1st  of  the  group,  which  opens  in  his  revered  master 
Spenser's  manner,  with  the  2nd,  5th,  and  6th  also,  merely  remarking 
that  the  lady  celebrated  under  the  pseudonym  of  Ctelia  appears  to 
be  the  same  whom  the  poet  apostrophizes  in  his  own  shepherdess 
Marina's  name  in  the  Third  Book  of  the  Pastorals,  which,  unlike 
Books  I  and  II,  published  in  1613  and  1616  respectively,  and 
republished  together  in  1625,  still  during  the  author's  lifetime, 
remained  in  MS.  until  1852,  when  it  was  edited  for  the  Percy 
Society  by  T.  Crofton  Croker  ;  and  mat,  notwithstanding  the  pau- 
city of  biographical  materials,  there  would  seem  to  be  in  the  case  of 
this  poet  more  than  ordinaiy  reason  for  suspecting  that  the  conven- 
tional exterior  of  his  verse  veils  a  real  love-history. 

'  For  collide  I  thincke  she  some  Idea  lueare, 
I  still  might  lo%ie,forgett,  and  have  her  heere  ; 
Bttt  such  she  is  not.' 

Brit.  Past.,  Booke  3,  Song  I. 

Loe,  I  the  man,  that  whilome  lov'd  and  lost, 
Not  dreading  losse,  doe  sing  againe  of  love  ; 
And  like  a  man  but  latelie  tempest-tost. 
Try  if  my  starres  still  inauspicious  prove  : 
Not  to  make  good  that  poets  never  can 
Long  time  without  a  chosen  Mistris  be 
Doe  I  sing  thus,  or  my  affections  ran 
"Within  the  Maze  of  Mutabilitie  ; 
What  best  I  lov'de  was  beauty  of  the  mind, 
And  that  lodgd  in  a  Temple  truely  faire. 
Which  ruyn'd  now  by  death,  if  I  can  finde 
The  Saint  that  livd  therein  some  othervvhere, 


334  ^otes 

SSilliam  profane. 

I  may  adore  it  there,  and  love  the  Cell 
For  entertaining  what  I  lov'd  so  well. 

Why  might  I  not  for  once  be  of  that  Sect, 

Which  hold  that  soules,  when  Nature  hath  her  right, 

Some  other  bodyes  to  themselves  elect ; 

And  sunlike  make  the  daye,  and  license  Night? 

That  soul,  whose  setting  in  one  Hemispheare 

Was  to  enlighten  streight  another  part, 

In  that  Horizon,  if  I  see  yt  there. 

Calls  for  my  first  respect  and  its  desert  ; 

Her  vertue  is  the  same  and  may  be  more  ; 

For  as  the  Sun  is  distant,  so  his  powre 

In  operation  differs,  and  the  store 

Of  thick  clowds  interposed  make  him  lesse  owr. 

And  verely  I  thinke  her  clymate  such. 

Since  to  my  former  flame  it  adds  soe  much.' 

Wer't  not  for  you,  here  should  my  pen  have  rest 
And  take  a  long  leave  of  sweet  Poesye  ; 
Britannias  swaynes,  and  rivers  far  by  west. 
Should  heare  no  more  mine  oaten  melodye  ; 
Yet  shall  the  song  I  sing  of  them,  awhile 
Unpei'fect  lye,  and  make  noe  further  knowne 
The  happy  loves  of  this  our  pleasant  He, 
Till  I  have  left  some  record  of  mine  owne. 
You  are  the  subject  now,  and,  writing  you, 
I  well  may  versify,  not  poetize  : 
Heere  needs  no  fiction  ;  for  the  graces  true 
And  vertues  clipj^not  with  base  flatteryes. 
Heere  should  I  write  what  you  deserve  of  praise, 
Others  might  weare,  but  I  should  win  the  bayes. 

Sing  soft,  ye  pretty  Birds,  while  Cselia  sleepes. 

And  gentle  gales  play  gently  with  the  leaves  ; 

Learne  of  the  neighbour  brookes,  whose  silent  deepes 

Would  teach  him  feare  that  her  soft  sleep  bereaves. 

Mine  Oaten  reed,  devoted  to  her  praise, 

(A  theame  that  would  befit  the  Delphian  lyre) 

Give  way,  that  I  in  silence  may  admire. 

Is  not  her  sleepe  like  that  of  innocents. 

Sweet  as  her  selfe  ?  and  is  she  not  more  faire, 

Almost  in  death,  then  are  the  Ornaments 

Of  f ruitfull  trees  which  newly  budding  are  ? 

She  is,  and  tell  it.  Truth,  when  she  shall  lye 

And  sleep  for  ever — for  she  cannot  dye  ! ' 

1  12,  owr  =  ours — 'and  perhaps  the  correcter  form.' — Hazlitt. 

*  Drummond  has '  neighbour  Brookes'  (Poems,  i6i6,  sig.  K3).  It  will  be  observed 
that  there  are  only  thirteen  lines  in  this  sonnet.  The  seventh  line,  which  should  rime 
with  '  praise,'  is  wanting  in  the  MS.  I  could  not  bring  myself  to  exclude  it  on  that 
account.     It  is  so  like  Burns's  '  Flow  gently,  sweet  Afton.' 


PAGE 


Notes  335 


68— cxxxv,  5-6.  Browne's  favourite  flower:  cp.  Brit.  Past.,  Booke 
2,  Song  3,  ed.  1625  : 

'  The  Daizy  scattred  on  each  Mead  and  Downe, 
A  golden  tuft  within  a  silver  Crowne, — 
Faire  fall  that  dainty  flowre  !  and  may  there  be 
No  Shepherd  grac'd  that  doth  not  honour  thee  ! ' 

cxxxiv-cxxxv.  The  5th  and  6th  of  a  group  of  seven  (one  lost) 
dainty  and  charming  little  poetical  apologues,  which  every  lover 
of  poetry  will  read  with  delight.  It  was  doubtless  in  imitation  of 
his  master  Spenser  that  the  poet  entitled  them  Visions.  I  select 
two  more,  the  3rd  and  7th  : — 

I  saw  a  silver  swan  swim  downe  the  Lee, 

Singing  a  sad  Farwell  unto  the  Vale, 

While  fishes  leapt  to  hear  her  melodic, 

And  on  each  thorne  a  gentle  Nightingale, 

And  many  other  Birds  forbore  their  notes, 

Leaping  from  tree  to  tree,  as  she  along 

The  panting  bosome  of  the  torrent  floates. 

Rapt  with  the  musick  of  her  dyeing  Song  : 

When  from  a  thick  and  all-entangled  spring 

A  neatheard  rude  came  with  noe  small  adoe, 

(Dreading  an  ill  presage  to  heare  her  sing,) 

And  quickly  strooke  her  slender  neck  in  two  ; 

Whereat  the  Birds  (me  thought)  flew  thence  with  speed, 

And  inly  griev'd  for  such  a  cruell  deed. 

A  Gentle  shepherd,  borne  in  Arcadye, 
That  well  could  tune  his  pipe,  and  deftly  playe 
The  Nimphs  asleepe  with  rurall  minstralsye. 
Me  thought  I  saw,  upon  a  summer's  daye. 
Take  up  a  little  Satyre  in  a  wood. 
All  masterlesse  forlorne  as  none  did  kno\v  him, 
And  nursing  him  with  those  of  his  owne  blood, 
On  mightye  Pan  he  lastlie  did  bestowe  him  ; 
But  with  the  god  he  long  time  had  not  been. 
Ere  he  the  shepherd  and  himselfe  forgott. 
And  most  ingratefull.  ever  stept  between 
Pan  and  all  good  befell  the  poore  mans  lott  : 
Whereat  all  good  men  griev'd,  and  strongly  swore 
They  never  would  be  fosterfathers  more. 

The  credit  of  having  first  printed  Browne's  sonnets  and  other  minor 
poems,  from  the  Lansdowne  MSS.  in  the  British  Museum,  belongs  to 
SirEgertonBrydges(<9;2]§/«a//'f^wj,  never  before  published,  by  William 
Browne,  of  the  Inner  Temple,  Gent.  With  a  Preface  and  Notes.  Lee 
Priory  Press  :  181 5,  4to),  who  in  his  '  Advertisement '  observes  :  '  There 
is  a  simplicity,  a  chasteness,  a  grace,  a  facility,  a  sweetness,  in  some  of 
the  present  short  poems,  which  to  me  is  full  of  attraction  and  delight ; 
and  is  the  more  surprising  when  it  is  contrasted  with  the  corrupt  and 


336  Notes 

^illinm  |^rofan:e. 

absurdly-metaphysical  style  of  most  of  Browne's  cotemporaries.'  It  is 
to  be  regretted  that  the  only  existing  editions  of  this  charming  poet's 
minor  pieces  are  so  incorrectly  printed.  I  have  found  it  necessary, 
even  for  these  few  examples,  to  go  to  the  originals.  They  are  there- 
fore given,  I  trust  with  absolute  accuracy,  from  the  poet's  own  man- 
uscript {_MSS.  Lansdowtie,  Brit.  Mus.,  777,  Art.  1,  fol.  U-10). 

George  Pcrkrt. 

PAGE 

69— cxxxvi,  8.  Cp.  Drummond's  Hymne  of  the  Fairest  Faire  {Flowres 
of  Sioti,  1623,  p.  34) : 

'  The  Organes  of  thy  Providence  divine, 
Bookes  ever  open,  Signes  that  clearelie  shine.' 

George  Herbert,  'that  sweet  singer  of  The  Temple,'  ihe^vaozt 
familiar  and  best-beloved  of  the  five  Worthies  whose  biographies 
engaged  Piscator's  '  antique  pen  ' — 

'  Satellites  burning  in  a  lucid  ring 
Around  meek  Walton's  heavenly  memory ' — 

wrote  but  few  sonnets,  and  these  of  the  illegitimate  order  ;  but  the 
unique  excellences  of  the  one  in  our  text  {TheTemple.  Sacred 
Poems  and  Private  Ejaculatio7is.  Cambridge,  1633,  p.  37)  will 
ensure  a  welcome  for  the  following  additional  specimen,  which,  if 
not  one  of  his  very  best  poems,  is  yet  very  good,  and  eminently 
characteristic  of  its  author  {ibid.,  p.  162) : — 

THE  SONNE. 
Let  forrain  nations  of  their  language  boast 
What  fine  varietie  each  tongue  affords  ; 
I  like  our  language,  as  our  men  and  coast ; 
Who  cannot  dress'e  it  well,  want  wit,  not  words. 
How  neatly  doe  we  give  one  onely  name 
To  parents  issue  and  the  sunnes  bright  starre ! 
A  Sonne  is  light  and  fruit  ;  a  fruitfuU  flame 
Chasing  the  fathers  dimnesse,  carri'd  farre 
From  the  first  man  in  th'  East,  to  fresh  and  new 
Western  discov'ries  of  posteritie. 
So  in  one  word  our  Lords  humilitie 
We  turn  upon  him  in  a  sense  most  true ; 
For  what  Christ  once  in  humblenesse  began, 
We  him  in  glorie  call,  The  Sonne  of  Man.' 

'  coast  =  land,  country  (z't'de  Eastwood  and  Wright's  Bi'Me  Word-Book,  Davies's 
Bible  English,  and  Grosart's  Sidney,  1877,  i,  43,  note  3).  14.  &««<•  =  the  Sun. 
'  There  was  nothing  irreverent  in  this  kind  of  serious  punning.' — Grosart  [yi\voz^ 
'  Aldine  '  ed.  of  Herbert,  1876,  p.  cxiii,  consult  for  further  instances). 


Notes  337 

Coleridge  {Biographia  Literaria,  2nd  ed.,  1847,  ii,  102),  illustrating 
the  perfection  of  simplicity  of  style  in  poetry,  adduces  the  sonnet  on 
Sitinc,  and  remarks  of  it  that  it  is  '  equally  admirable  for  the  weight, 
number,  and  expression  of  the  thoughts,  and  for  the  simple  dignity  of 
the  language  ;  unless,  indeed,  a  fastidious  taste  should  object  to  the  lat- 
ter half  of  the  sixth  line.'  YA&Qwh.ere  {The Friend,  4th  ed.,  1850,  i,  52)  he 
writes:  '  Having  mentioned  the  name  of  Herbert,  that  model  of  a  man, 
a  gentleman,  and  a  clergyman,  let  me  add  that  the  quaintness  of  some 
of  his  thoughts  (not  of  his  diction,  than  which  nothing  can  be  more  pure, 
manly,  and  unaffected)  has  blinded  modern  readers  to  the  great  general 
merit  of  his  poems,  which  are  for  the  most  part  exquisite  in  their  kind.' 
And  again  [Notes  and  Lectures  upon  Shakespeare,  &c.,  1849,  ii,  264): 
'  I  find  more  substantial  comfort  now  in  pious  George  Herbert's  Temple, 
which  I  used  to  read  to  amuse  myself  with  his  quaintness,  in  short, 
only  to  laugh  at,  than  in  all  the  poetry  since  the  poems  of  Milton.' 

SttUlliiTin  |);ibiaqtoit. 

PAGE 

69 — cxxxvii.  From  Casta7-a  :  The  Third  Edition.  Corrected  and  Aug- 
mented. 1640.  This  work,  '  one  of  the  most  elegant  monuments 
ever  raised  by  genius  to  conjugal  affection, '  says  Mrs.  Jameson  {Loves 
of  the  Poets,  1829,  ii,  iio),  was  first  published  in  1634.  For  an 
account  of  Habington's  life  and  writings  see  \^ ood! •iAthence  Oxo- 
nienses,  ed.  Bliss,  vol.  iii,  1817,  Brydges's  Censtira  Literaria,  vol. 
viii,  2nd  ed.,  1815,  and  the  editions  of  Castara  edited  by  Charles 
A.  Elton  (Bristol :  1812)  and  Mr.  Arber  (1870)  ;  and  for  a  critical 
estimate  of  his  poetry,  Masson's  Life  of  Milton,  i,  1859,  453-8. 

'  Milton's  English  Sonnets  are  only  seventeen  in  all : 
"  Soul-animating  strains,  alas  !  too  few." 

They  are  so  far  beyond  all  question  the  noblest  in  the  language  that  it 
is  a  matter  of  curious  interest  to  note  the  utter  incapacity  of  Johnson  to 
recognize  any  greatness  in  them  at  all.  The  utmost  which  he  will  allow 
is  that  "three  of  them  are  not  bad  ;  "  and  he  and  Hannah  More  once 
set  themselves  to  investigate  the  causes  of  their  badness,  the  badness 
itself  being  taken  for  granted.  Johnson's  explanation  of  this  contains 
a  lively  illustration  :  "  Why,  Madam,"  he  said,  "  Milton's  was  a  genius 
that  could  hew  a  Colossus  out  of  a  rock,  but  could  not  carve  heads  on 
cherry-stones.'" — Dr.  Trench} 

1  A  Household  Book  of  English  Poetry,  p.  397,  ed.  1870.  It  seems  that  Milton's 
sonnets  are  one  less  'few'  than  we  ordinarily  reckon  them, — at  least  if  Wordsworth 


338  Notes 

'  The  sonnets  of  Milton  are  few  ;  but  they  rendered  this  important 
service  : — that  they  enlarged  the  sphere  of  that  form  of  verse,  showing 
that  it  was  not  confined  to  amatory  poetry  ;  that  it  was  fitted  not  only 
for  the  expression  of  tender  emotions,  but  for  the  utterance  of  a  states- 
manly  philosophy,  dignified  rebuke,  the  deep.  Christian  meditation,  and 
whatever  else  belongs  to  poetry's  grandest  and  most  majestic  tones.' — 

Henry  Reed'} 

'  Few  his  words,  but  strong, 
And  sounding  through  all  ages  and  all  climes. 
He  caught  the  Sonnet  from  the  dainty  hand 
Of  Love,  who  cried  to  lose  it  ;  and  he  gave 
The  notes  to  Glory.' 

Walter  Savage  Landor!'' 

PAGE 

70 — CXXXVIII,  I.  An  unnoted  recollection  of  Sylvester  may  be  men- 
tioned {Fift  Day  of  First  Weeke,  ed.  1613,  p.  132): 

'  Thence  thirty  steps,  amid  the  leafie  Sprayes, 
Another  Nightingale  repeats  her  Layes.' 

'  Warblest  is  printed  "  Warbl'st  "  in  the  First  and  Second  editions, 
and  is  to  be  pronounced  accordingly.' — Masson  (Milton's  Poetical 
Works,  1874,  iii,  465).  5-7.  Newton  cites  Chaucer  on  this  super- 
stition (Ctickow  and  Nightingale ,  46-50),  and  under  an  instance  in 
Webster's  comedy,  A  Cure  for  a  Cuckold,  act  iv,  sc.  i,  ed.  1857, 
Dyce  quotes  Milton  and  noies  :  '  He  who  happened  to  hear  the 
cuckoo  sing  before  the  nightingale  was  supposed  not  to  prosper  in 
his  love-affairs.'  As  the  sonnet  is' supposed  to  have  been  written 
in  1633,  either  the  species  of  augury  professed  is  somewhat  faulty, 
or  in  Milton's  case  the  '  twofold  shout '  continued  for  ten  years 
longer  to  forestall  the  nightingale's  song  :  he  remained  unmarried 
until  1643.  Mr.  Keightley  goes  into  raptures  over  this  sonnet 
{Life  of  Miltoit,  1855,  p.  270) :  '  In  our  eyes  [it]  is  absolute  per- 
fection, and  most  certainly  equal  to  anything  of  the  kind  in  the 
Italian  or  any  other  language.' 

CXXXIX.  This  sonnet  occurs  in  a  letter  of  Milton's  written ,  accord- 
ing to  Masson,  in  December,  1631,  or  in  the  early  part  of  1631-2, 
which  '  was  sent,  or  meant  to  be  sent,  to  some  friend  in  Cambridge, 
his  senior  in  years,  who  had  been  remonstrating  with  him  on  his 

was  right  in  what  he  is  reported  to  have  said  about  one  being  hidden  away  somewhere 
in  the  Paradise  Lost.  '  I  wish.'  says  Henry  Crabb  Robinson  {Diary,  1869,  iii,  86), 
'  I  could  here  write  down  all  that  Wordsworth  has  said  about  the  Sonnet  lately,  or 
record  here  the  fine  fourteen  lines  of  Milton's  "  Paradise  Lost,"  which  he  says  are  a 
perfect  sonnet  without  rime,  and  essentially  one  in  unity  of  thought.'  Milton's  Italian 
sonnets,  six  in  number,  were  last  translated  by  Dr.  George  MacDonald  (^Exotics,  1S76). 

'  Lectures,  &c.,  as  before,  i,  221. 

*  Last  Fruit  off  an  Old  Tree,  1853,  p.  473. 


Notes  339 

PAGE 

aimeless' course  of  life  at  the  University.'  It  is  thus  introduced  : 
'  Yet,  that  you  may  see  that  I  am  something  suspicious  of  myself, 
and  do  take  notice  of  a  certain  belatedness  in  me,  I  am  the  bolder 
to  send  you  some  of  my  nightward  thoughts  some  while  since,  be- 
cause they  come  in  not  altogether  unfitly,  made  up  in  a  Petrarchian 
stanza,  which  I  told  you  of.'  {Life  of  Milton,  i,  291).  I.  Keightlcy 
(Rliltons  Poems,  1859,  i,  37)  compares  Shakspeare  (Son.  77)  : 

'  Times  theevish  progresse  to  eternitie.' 
8.  Possibly  the  fame  of  Cowley's  precocious  genius  had  reached 
Milton's  ears.  The  Poetical  Blossoms,  by  A.  C.  did  not  appear  until 
1633,  his  fifteenth  year,  but  the  prodigy  had  actually  written  an 
epical  romance  on  the  story  of  Pyramus  and  Thisbe  as  early  as  his 
eleventh.  9-14.  '  The  It  which  is  the  subject  of  the  last  six  lines 
is  his  Ripeness  :  it  will  keep  pace  with  his  approaching  lot  ;  when 
it  arrives  he  will  be  ready  for  it,  whatever  it  may  be.  The  will  of 
heaven  is  his  happy  fate.  Even  at  three-and-twenty,  "he  that  be- 
lieveth  shall  not  make  haste."  Calm  and  open-eyed,  he  works 
to  be  ripe,  and  waits  for  the  work  that  shall  follow.' — England's 
Antipkon,  p.  197. 
71 — CXL.  The  occasion  was  when  the  King,  having  after  the  battle  of 
Edgehill  succeeded  in  occupying  Brentford,  seemed  determined 
with  Prince  Rupert  en  an  immediate  assault  upon  London;  and  the 
citizens  made  their  famous  march  to  Turnham  Green  to  arrest  his 
approach  (November,  1642).  The  poet's  house  was  then  in  Alders- 
gate  Street.  In  the  Milton  MS.  folio  preserved  in  the  Library  of 
■  Trinity  College,  Cambridge,  an  amanuensis  has  headed  the  sonnet 
'  On  his  dore  when  ye  citty  expected  an  assault  ; '  but  that  title  is 
scored  through,  and  the  present  one  substituted  in  Milton's  own 
hand.  The  Emathian  conqueror  =  Alexander,  at  the  sack  of 
Thebes,  B.C.  335.  repeated  —  recited,  sung.  '  Plutarch  relates  that 
when  the  Lacedemonian  general  Lysander  took  Athens  [b.c.  404], 
it  was  proposed  in  a  council  of  war  intirely  to  rase  the  city,  and 
convert  its  site  into  a  desert.  But  during  the  debate,  at  a  banquet 
of  the  chief  officers,  a  certain  Phocian  sung  some  fine  anastrophics 
from  a  chorus  of  the  Electra  of  Euripides  ;  which  so  affected  the 
hearers,  that  they  declared  it  an  unworthy  act  to  reduce  a  place  so 
celebrated  for  the  production  of  illustrious  men,  to  total  ruin  and 
desolation.' — T.  Warton  {Milton's  Minor  Poertis,  2nd  ed.,  1791,  p. 
335).  Todd  notes  in  his  edition  of  Milton  (1801,  v,  p.  464)  that 
the  epithet  sad  had  already  been  applied  to  Electra  by  Drummond 
( Teares  on  the  Death  of  Mceliades)  : 

'  And  sad  Electras  sisters  which  still  weepe.' 


34©  Notes 

loljit  ililtoiv. 

PAGE  ... 

Keightley  remarks  that  Collins  in  his  Ode  to  Simplicity  uses  the 
phrase  more  correctly  of  Sophocles. 
71 — cLXi.  Ruth  .  .  .  ruth.  In  Italian  and  other  Latin  languages, 
words  identical  in  sound,  and  even  in  orthography,  are  permissible 
as  rimes,  provided  the  sense  be  different.  Chaucer  and  Spenser 
\e.g.  XX,  p.  II,  make  .  .  make)  frequently  used  the  license  of 
which  Milton  here  avails  himself.  Even  Mr.  Tennyson  in  the 
earlier  editions  of  In  Menioriani  makes 

'  This  holly  by  the  cottage  eave ' 
rime  with 

'  And  sadly  falls  our  Christmas  eve.' 

pity  and  ruth.  Chaucer  and  Spenser  again,  and  Drummond  (cxxi, 
p.  61),  have  this  combination  ;  as  also  Julian  Fane  (ccccxLix,  p. 
227).  growing  virtues  :  '  blooming  vertue  '  (MS.).  11-14.  Cp.  the 
first  of  the  anonymous  sonnets  on  page  307.  See  under  CLiii  for  a 
remark  on  this  and  other  sonnets  of  Milton's  addressed  to  women.- 

72— CXLii.  The  title  is  from  the  Cambridge  MS.  '  This  Lady,' 
Phillips  tells  us  {Life  of  Mr.  John  Milton,  1694,  p.  xxiii),  '  being  a 
Woman  of  great  Wit  and  Ingenuity,  had  a  particular  Honour  for 
him  [Milton],  and  took  much  delight  in  his  Company,  as  likewise 
her  Husband  Captain  Hobson  [of  the  Isle  of  Wight], a  very  Accom- 
plish'd  Gentleman.'  She  was  the  fifth  daughter  of  Sir  James  Ley, 
the  eminent  lawyer,  afterwards  first  Earl  of  Marlborough,  who  died 
at  Lincoln's  Inn,  March  14th,  1628-9, —  'exactly  four  days,'  ob- 
serves Masson,  '  after  that  ominous  dissolution  of  Charles's  third 
Parliament  which  announced  his  determination  to  have  done  with 
Parliaments  and  begin  the  reign  of  "  Thorough."  '  that  old  man 
eloquent  =  Isocrates,  the  Athenian  orator,  who  is  said  to  have 
voluntarily  starved  himself,  unable  to  survive  the  defeat  of  his 
countrymen  by  Philip  of  Macedon  at  Chseroneia,  B.C.  338  ;  and  the 
same  whose  AuyoZ  "'ApEoitayttiKoi  suggested  the  form  and  title 
of  Milton's  own  glorious  Areopagitica. 

70-72 — cxxxvili-CXLli.  These  constitute  the  English  sonnet-portion 
of  Poems  of  Mr.  John  Milton,  both  English  and  Latin,  Compos' d 
at  several  times.  Printed  by  his  true  Copies.  1645.  This  was  the  first 
edition  of  Milton's  poems.  Immediately  succeeding  our  cxLil  in  the 
next  edition,  published  twenty-eight  years  later,  which  I  use  for  text 
throughout,  come  two  sonnets,  headed  in  the  Cambridge  MS.  '  On 
the  Detraction  which  followed  upon  my  writing  certain  Treatises,' 
the  second  of  which  may  be  given  here.  They  were  probably 
written  towards   the  close  of   1645,  about  a  year  after  the  pub- 


Notes  241 

PAGE 

lication  of  the  Tetrachordon  and  Colastenon,  the  last  of  the  tracts 
on  Divorce,  and,  as  Masson  remarks,  may  be  regarded  as  Milton's 
'poetical  farewell'  to  that  subject.     (Poeftis,  1673,  p.  56): — 

I  did  but  prompt  the  age  to  quit  their  cloggs 

By  the  known  rules  of  antient  libertie, 

When  strait  a  barbarous  noise  environs  me 

Of  Owles  and  Cuckoes,  Asses,  Apes  and  Doggs. 

As  when  those  Hinds  that  were  transform 'd  to  Froggs 

Raild  at  Latona's  twin-born  progenie 

Which  after  held  the  Sun  and  Moon  in  fee. 

But  this  is  got  by  casting  Pearl  to  Hoggs  ; 

That  bawle  for  freedom  in  their  senceless  mood, 

And  still  revolt  when  truth  would  set  them  free. 

Licence  they  mean  when  they  cry  libertie  ; 

For  who  loves  that,  must  first  be  wise  and  good  ; 

But  from  that  mark  how  far  they  roave  we  see 

For  all  this  wast  of  wealth,  and  loss  of  blood.* 

72— CXLlli.  Henry  Lawes,  '  Gentleman  of  the  King's  Chappel,  and 
one  of  His  Majesties  private  Musick,'  was  perhaps  the  most  popular 
musical  composer  of  his  time.  He  composed  the  music  of  the 
songs  in  Comus  and  other  masques,  and  part  of  that  of  the  magni- 
ficent one  '  got  up  by  the  lawyers  of  the  four  Inns  of  Court  in 
February,  1633-4,'  under  the  management  of  Selden,  Attorney- 
General  Noy,  Bulstrode  Whitlocke,  Hyde,  and  others.  Lyrics  by 
Carew,  Herrick,  Waller,  Cartwright,  and  other  poets  were  also  set 
to  music  by  him.  The  reader  will  remember  Herrick's  tribute- 
verses,  '  Touch  but  thy  Lire,  my  Harrie,'  and  those  to  his  brother 
also,  '  M,  William  Lawes,  the  rare  Musitian. '  Henry  died  in  1662, 
and  was  buried  in  Westminster  Abbey,  '  after  having  lived,'  says 
Masson,  '  to  see  the  Restoration,  to  have  the  honour  of  composing 
the  Coronation  Ode  for  Charles  II,  and  to  be  replaced  in  his  posi- 
tion near  Royalty,  while  his  friend  Milton,  then  the  blind  ex-Secre- 
tary of  Cromwell,  was  in  danger  and  disgrace.'  tiot  to  scan  With 
Midas  ears.  '  That  is,  not  to  mis-match  short  syllables  with  long 
syllables  (from  the  Latin  sense  of  committere  in  such  a  phrase  as 
committere  pugiles,  to  match  gladiators  in  the  circus)  ;  which  was 
the  kind  of  scanning  of  which  Midas  [Ovid,  Metam,  xi]  may  be 
supposed  to  have  been  guilty  when  he  decided  in  favour  of  Pan  in 
the  musical  contest  between  that  god  and  Apollo,  and  had  his 
faulty  ears  changed  into  those  of  an  ass  in  consequence.  The 
reference  seems  to  be  to  the  common  fault  of  musical  composers  in 

'  5-7.  Ovid,  yi/f/a?;?.  vi,  337-381.  11-12.  Cp.  a  passage  towards  the  beginning  of 
The  Tcnu7-e  of  Kings  and  Magistrates  (164S— 9) :  '  For  indeed  none  can  love  freedom 
heartily,  but  good  men  :  the  rest  love  not  freedom,  but  licence.'  The  thought  has 
been  amplified  in  sonnet-form  by  Hartley  Coleridge  {Poems,  2nd  ed.,  1851,  i,  149,  and 
ii,  5°)- 


342 


Notes 

loijit  pUtoit. 
paying  no  attention  to  the  words  they  are  setting,  and  so  laying  the 
musical  stress  often  on  insignificant  and  non-emphatic  syllables  ; 
from  which  fault  Lawes  is  declared  to  be  free.' — Masson.     L.  9. 
lend  (MS.) :  '  send '  (1673).    13-14.   '  Dante,  on  his  arrival  in  Pur- 
gatory [from  Hell, — hence  '  milder  shades  'J  sees  a  vessel  approach- 
ing the  shore,  freighted  with  souls  under  the  conduct  of  an  angel, 
to  be  cleansed  from  their  sins  and  made  fit  for  Paradise.     When 
they  are  disembarked,  the  poet  recognizes  in  the  crowd  his'  old 
friend  Casella  the  musician.     The  interview  is  strikingly  imagined, 
and  in  the  course  of  an  affectionate  dialogue,  the  poet  requests  a 
soothing  air  ;  and  Casella  sings,  with  the  most  ravishing  sweetness, 
Dante's  second  Canzone,  "Amor,  che  nella  mente  mi  ragiona.".' — 
T.   Warton.     The  sonnet,  which  had  previously  appeared  in  the 
brothers'  Choice  Psalms,  &c.,  i648,*and  of  which  one  of  the  MS. 
headings  is  'To  my  friend  Mr.  Hen.  Laws,  Feb.  g,  1645,' should 
'  be  compared  with  Barnfield's  To  his  friend  Maister  R.  L.,  page 
300,  and  the  two  following  on  modern  composers. 
TO  BEETHOVEN. 
O  Master,  if  Immortals  suffer  aught 
Of  sadness  like  to  ours,  and  in  like  sighs 
And  with  like  overflow  of  darkened  eyes 
Disburden  them,  I  know  not ;  but  methought. 
What  time  to-day  mine  ear  the  utterance  caught 
Whereby  in  manifold  melodious  wise 
Thy  heart's  unrestful  infelicities 
Rose  like  a"  sea  with  easeless  winds  distraught. 
That  thine  seemed  angel's  lamentation,  heard 
Down  inaccessible  midnight  wandering  : 
Nay,  as  some  soul's  from  forth  her  star  unspliered 
Of  utmost  heaven,  and  through  the  unknown  of  Space 
Foredoomed  to  roam  as  roams  the  wind,  and  sing 
Of  her  lost  glories  and  lost  dwelling-place. 

William  Watson.^ 
TO  MENDELSSOHN: 

[ON    HEARING   ONE  OF   HIS   CONCERTOS.] 

O  for  a  spell-built  palace,  by  the  craft 

Of  Afreets  reared,  with  sumptuous  chambers  high, 

Upheld  on  many  a  quaintly-carven  shaft. 

And  arabesqued  witli  cunningest  tracery  ; 

Where  tempered  sunshine  should  fall  dreamily. 

Charming  a  crystal  fountain  to  repose. 

And  the  celestial  fragrance  of  the  rose 

Should  wafted  come  from  shadowy  courts  hard  by. 

There  let  thy  music  wake  with  fervid  flow 

Of  rhythmic  undulations — like  the  sweep 

'  From  an  unpublished  MS. 


Notes 


343 


Of  wind  through  midnight  tree-tops, — murmuring  low, 
In  tenderest  melancholy,  or  trances  deep 
Of  utterless  joy  ;  sweet  songs  of  long  ago. 
Sealing  the  eyes  in  happy-visioned  sleep. 

John  Todhtmter} 
73 — CXLiv.  The  title  from  the  Cambridge  MS.     L.    12.  spake  i^'$>^: 
'  speak  '  (i673\ 

CXLV.  '  To  the  Lord  General  Fairfax  '  is  the  usual  title  ;  but  the 
MS.  shows  that  originally  the  sonnet  was  headed  '  On  y<^  Lord 
Gen.  Fairfax  at  y^  Siege  of  Colchester '  (  =  June  I2 — August  28, 
1648).  ivip  =  graft — a  term  in  falconry.  Cp.  Drummond  ( Teares 
on  the  Death  of  Mixliades  :  Poems,  1616,  sig.  K3) : 

'While  some  new  Homer,  imping  Pennes  [=;feathers]  to  Fame.' 
7 — 8.  In  allusion  to  the  Scottish  '  Engagement  'with  the  King,  and 
the  Duke  of  Hamilton's  subsequent  march  into  England,  July, 
1648.  This  sonnet,  the  two  succeeding  it,  and  CLii,  for  obvious 
political  reasons  withheld  from  the  volume  of  1673,  originally  ap- 
peared, somewhat  corruptly,  at  the  end  of  Phillips's  Life  of  his 
uncle, prefixed  to  the  English  translation  of  yiWions  Letters  of  State, 
i694,and  were  first  given  in  their  present  form  (excepting  titles  and 
punctuation,  and  a  single  word,  in  which  I  follow  the  MS.)  by  New- 
ton (1752).  The  one  to  Vane,  however,  had  appeared  anonymously 
as  early  as  1662,  in  the  Life  and  Death  of  that  extraordinary  man, 
where  it  is  introduced  (p.  93)  as  '  a  paper  of  Verses,  composed  by 
a  learned  Gentleman,  and  sent  him,  July  3,  1652.'  All  four  illus- 
trate the  axiom  that  even  the  most  original  style  has  its  pedigree. 
It  would  be  difficult  to  name  an  equal  number  of  Milton's  other 
minor  poems  exhibiting  so  marked  a  Miltonic  physiognomy  ;  yet 
there  seems  little  doubt  that  he  caught  their  tone  from  his  prede- 
cessors in  English  poetry  :  Spenser  notably,  but  also,  in  a  lesser 
degree,  Sylvester  and  Chapman.  I  do  not  refer  to  Spenser's  better 
known  sonnets,  but  to  those  accompanying  the  Faerie  Queene, 
which  many  critics  besides  Sir  Egerton  Br)'dges  {Bjit.  Biblio.,  iv., 
1814,  p.  2)  have  regarded  as  his  best.  '  These  sonnets,'  observes 
Professor  Lowell  in  an  essay  on  Spenser  {Among  My  Books,  2nd 
series,  Eng.  ed.,  p.  186),  '  are  of  a  much  stronger  build  than  the 
Ainoretti,  and  some  of  them  recall  the  firm  tread  of  Milton's, 
though  differing  in  structure.'  He  specializes  the  following,  which, 
it  may  be  added,  also  strikingly  foreshows  that  other  characteristic 
of  Milton— his  effective  employment  of  proper  names  {Spenser's 
Works,  folio,  1611)  : 

'  Lauretta  and  Other  Poems,  1876,  p.  217. 


344  Notes 


PAGE 


loljit    Uliltoir. 

TO    THE  RIGHT  NOBLE  LORD   AND   MOST   VALIANT 

CAPTAINE,    SIR  JOHN   NORRIS,    KNIGHT,    LORD    PRESIDENT    OF    JIOUNSTER. 

Who  ever  gave  more  honourable  prize 
To  the  sweet  Muse  then  did  the  Martiall  crew, 
That  their  brave  deeds  she  might  immortalize 
In  her  shrill  tromp,  and  sound  their  praises  dew? 
Who  then  ought  more  to  favour  her  then  you, 
Moste  noble  Lord,  the  honor  of  this  age, 
And  Precedent  of  all  that  Amies  ensue  ? 
Whose  warlike  prowesse  and  manly  courage, 
Tempred  with  reason  and  advizement  sage. 
Hath  fild  sad  Belgick  with  victorious  spoile  ; 
In  France  and  Ireland  left  a  famous  gage  ; 
And  lately  shak't  the  Lusitanian  soile. 
Sith  then  each  where  thou  hast  disspred  thy  fame, 
L'ove  him  that  hath  eternized  your  name. 

Edmund  Spenser. 
As  to  Sylvester  and  Chapman's  part  in  the  genesis  of  Milton's 
style  I  must  refer  the  reader  to  Dunster  on  the  former  {Considera- 
tions on  Milton's  Early  Readings  and  the  Prima  Stajnina  of  his 
Paradise  Lost,  &c.,  1800),  and  Coleridge  on  the  luiier  (supra,  p. 
262). 
74— CXLVi,  13-14.  The  Presbyterians  are  meant  here.  Cp.  the  great 
passage  in  Lycidas  (beginning  '  Blind  mouths  ! ')  as  expounded  by 
Mr.  Ruskin  (Sesame  and  Lilies,  p.  23,  ed,  1871).  In  this  instance 
only  has  Milton  terminated  an  English  sonnet  in  a  rimed  couplet ; 
nor  could  he  have  done  it  with  less  effect,  or  in  worse  taste. 

CXLVII,  I.  Dunster  cites  Sylvester  here  {Du  Bartas,  p.  160,  ed. 
1033)  :      '  Isaac,  in  years  young,  but  in  wisdome  grown.' 
4.   '  Pyrrhus  [king  of  Epirus]  and  Hannibal  are  intended.     Their 
attacks  on  Rome  were  frustrated  by  the  wisdom  of  the   Senate 
rather   than   by  the   repelling    force   of   arms.' — R.    C.    Browne 
(Milton's  English  Poems,  Clar.  Press,  Revised  ed.,  1S73).     13-14. 
Phillips's  reading — '  infinitely  better '  in  Newton's  opinion — is 
'  Therefore  on  thy  Right  hand  Religion  leans. 
And  reckons  thee  in  chief  her  Eldest  Son.' 
'  This  Sonnet  breathes  the  same  spirit  as  the  last,  and  may  have 
been  writen  at  the  same  time,  or  perhaps  somewhat  earlier.     If  it 
was  written   in    1652,  Vane  was  in  his  fortieth  year  when  it  was 
addressed  to  him,  and  was  one  of  the  Council  of  State  ;  but,  as  his 
father  was  still  alive,  he  was  always  known  as  the  Younger  Vane. 
It  was  recollected,  moreover,  how  he  had  entered  the  Long  Parlia- 
ment at  the  age  of  twenty-seven,  having  already  distinguished  him- 


Notes  345 


PAGE 


self  in  America,  and  how  all  through  the  Parliament  he  had  acted 
and  been  regarded  as  one  of  the  subtlest  and  boldest  theorists  of 
the  extreme  Revolutionary  party.  In  his  style  of  mind  he  was 
what  would  now  be  called  a  doctrinaire,  or  abstract  thinker,  with 
perhaps  a  dash  of  the  fanatic  ;  and,  as  Milton  hints,  he  had  exercised 
himself  very  particularly  on  the  question  of  the  relations  and  mutual 
limits  of  the  Church  and  State,  having  had  practical  occasion  to 
consider  that  question  as  early  as  1636,  when  he  was  Governor  of 
Massachusetts.  After  the  Restoration  he  was  brought  to  the 
scaffold.  June  14,  1662.' — Masson. 

74 — CXLVi — CXLVII.   See  reference  to  these  under  CXLV  (p.  343). 

75 — CXLViii,  2.  Warton  noted  the  interesting  echo  here  from  Fairfax's 
Tasso  (Godfrey  of  Bulloigne,  xiii,  60,  p.  246,  2nd  ed.,  1624) : 

.   .   .    '  falling  streamed  which  to  the  valleys  greene 
Distill'd  from  tops  of  Alpine  mountaines  cold.' 

'  This  day  [June  3d,  1655]  come  sad  news  out  of  Piedmont ;  con- 
firmation of  bad  rumours  there  had  been,  which  deeply  affects  all 
pious  English  hearts,  and  the  Protector's  most  of  all.  It  appears 
the  Duke  of  Savoy  had,  not  long  since,  decided  on  having  certain 
poor  Protestant  subjects  of  his  converted  at  last  to  the  Catholic 
Religion.  Poor  Protestant  people,  who  dwell  in  the  obscure  valleys 
of  "  Lucerna,  of  Perosa,  and  St.  Martin,"  among  the  feeders  of 
the  Po,  in  the  Savoy  Alps  :  they  are  thought  to  be  descendants  of 
the  old  Waldenses  ;  a  pious,  inoffensive  people  :  dear  to  the  hearts 
and  imaginations  of  all  Protestant  men.  These,  it  would  appear, 
the  Duke  of  Savoy,  in  the  past  year,  undertook  to  himself  to  get 
converted  ;  for  which  object  he  sent  friars  to  preach  among  them. 
The  friars  could  convert  nobody  ;  one  of  the  friars,  on  the  contrary, 
was  found  assassinated, — signal  to  the  rest  that  they  had  better  take 
themselves  away.  The  Duke  thereupon  sent  other  missionaries  : 
six  regiments  of  Catholic  soldiers  ;  and  an  order  to  the  People  of 
the  Valleys  either  to  be  converted  straightway,  or  quit  the  country 
at  once.  They  could  not  be  converted  all  at  once  :  neither  could 
■  they  quit  the  country  well  ;  the  month  was  December  ;  among  the 
Alps  ;  and  it  was  their  home  for  immemorial  years  !  .  .  .  Pity  is 
perennial:  "Ye  have  compassion  on  one  another, " — is  it  not  notable, 
beautiful  ?  .  .  .  The  Lord  Protector  is  melted  into  tears,  and 
roused  into  sacred  fire.  This  day  the  French  Treaty,  not  unimpor- 
tant to  him,  was  to  be  signed  :  this  day  he  refuses  to  sign  it  till  the 
King  and  Cardinal  undertake  to  assist  him  in  getting  right  done  in 
these  poor  Valleys.  He  sends  the  poor  exiles  2,000/.  from  his  own 
purse  ;  appoints  a  Day  of  Humiliation  and  a  general  Collection 


346  Notes 

lobit  ililton. 

over  England  for  that  object ; — has,  in  short,  decided  that  he  will 
bring  help  to  these  poor  men  ;  that  England  and  he  will  see  them 
helped  and  righted.     How  Envoys  were  sent ;  how  blind  Milton 
wrote  Letters  to  all  Protestant  States,  calling  on  them  for  coopera- 
tion ;  how  the  French  Cardinal  was  shy  to  meddle,  and  yet  had  to 
meddle,  and  compel  the  Duke  of  Savoy,  much  astonished  at  th^ 
business,  to  do  justice  and  not  what  he  liked  with  his  own  :'  etseq. — 
Thomas   Carlyle  {Oliver  Crotrnvell's  Letters  and  Speeches :  zvith 
Ehuidations,  iv,  pp.  116-118,  ed.  1871).     Of  the  despatches  which 
as  Latin  Secretary  Milton  wrote,  Henry  Reed  remarks  how  there 
seems  to  be  a  tone  of  imagination  in  their  very  address — '  a  Miltonic 
aggregation  of  vague  geographical  names  ; — "Oliver,  Protector  of 
the  Commonwealth  of  England,  to  the  Emperor  of  all  Russia  and 
all  the  Northern  climes  ;  "  or  to  "  the  King  of  the  Swedes,  Goths, 
and  Vandals  ;  "  calling  to  their  remembrance  how  the  valleys  of 
Piedmont  were  besmeared  with  the   blood  and  slaughter  of  the 
miserable  victims,  and  the  mountains  filled  with  the  houseless  wan- 
derers,—women  and  children  perishing  with  hunger  and  cold  and 
the  sword  of  the  persecutor.   .   .   .   The  spirit  of  Milton  was  so 
stirred  by  the  sufferings  of  the  Waldenses,  that  he  felt  the  need  of 
more  even  than  high-toned  mandates  to  earthly  monarchs  ;  and 
therefore  there  went  up  from  the  depths  of  his  poet's  heart,  in  one 
of  his  mighty  sonnets,  the  fervid  imprecation,  "Avenge,  O  Lord," 
— a  note  so  fearful  and  so  loud,  that  we  can  almost  fancy  it  echoing 
over  the  valleys  in  which  the  bones  of  the  martyrs  lay  covered  with 
snow.'    {Lectures,  as  before,  i,  p.  223).    Well  might  Lord  Macaulay 
describe  this  great  sonnet  as  a  '  collect  in  verse.'-  We  have  doubt- 
less Landor's  own  opinion  when  he  makes  Southey,  in  response  to 
Person's  allusion  to  it  as  a  '  magnificent  psalrri,'  observe,  '  This  is 
indeed  the  noblest  of  sonnets  ; '  and  Mr.  Palgrave  characterizes  it 
as  the  most  mighty  sonnet  in  any  language  known  to  him.      It  is 
with  a  sinking  at  the  heart  that  one  turns  from  such  glorious  co- 
operation in  righteousness,  of  Poet  and  Prince,  of  Parliament  and 
People,  to  certain  episodes  in  modern  England's  foreign  policy. 
But  let  us  rejoice  that  the  Poet  at  least  is  still  'faithful  found.' 
{Poems,  1870,  p.  275) : — 

ON  REFUSAL  OF  AID  BETWEEN  NATIONS. 

Not  that  the  earth  is  changing,  O  my  God  ! 

Nor  that  the  seasons  totter  in  their  walk, — 

Not  that  the  virulent  ill  of  act  and  talk 

Seethes  ever  as  a  v/inepress  ever  trod, — 

Not  therefore  are  we  certain  that  the  rod 


Notes  247 

PAGE 

Weighs  in  thine  hand  to  smite  thy  world  :  though  now 

Beneath  thine  hand  so  many  nations  bow, 

So  many  kings  : — not  therefore,  O  my  God  ! — 

But  because  Man  is  parcelled  out  in  men 

Even  thus  ;  because,  for  any  wrongful  blow, 

No  man  not  stricken  asks,  '  I  would  be  told    ' 

Why  thou  dost  strike  ; '  but  his  heart  whispers  then, 

'  He  is  he,  I  am  I.'     By  this  we  know 

That  the  earth  falls  asunder,  being  old. 

Dante  Gabnel  Rossetti. 
75 — CXLix.  This  sonnet  is  usually  placed  as  though  most  probably 
written  in  1652  ;  but  it.  may  well  have  been  done  at  any  time 
between  that  and  1655.  In  Milton's  own  edition  it  comes  after  \S\q. 
sonnet  on  the  Piedmontese  Massacre.  L.  3.  On  this  allusion  by 
Milton  to  the  Parable,  Matt,  xxv,  Newton  remarks  :  '  And  he 
speaks  with  great  modesty  of  himself,  as  if  he  had  not  five,  or  two, 
but  only  one  talent.'  As  to  what  Milton  signifies  by  '  that  one 
talent '  a  most  inexplicable  misapprehension  exists  amongst  his  ex- 
positors, not  excepting  Masson,  the  last  and  best  of  all,  who  anno- 
tates {Poetical  Works,  as  before,  iii.  481)  :  '  Milton  speaks  of  his 
eyesight  as  the  "  one  talent  "  he  had  received.'  How  any  person 
acquainted  with  Milton's  prose  works  should  miss  the  significance 
of  the  sonnet  passes  comprehension.  Otherwise  it  would  have  been 
superfluous  to  observe  that  by  the  '  one  talent '  Milton  means  his 
literary,  his  poetical  talent,  the  employment  of  which  to  some  high 
end  he  conceived  to  be  his  appointed  work  in  life.  Had  he  not 
said  {Reason  of  Church-Government,  1641,  bk.  ii,  Intro.):  .  .  .  '  by 
labour  and  intent  study,  which  I  take  to  be  my  portion  in  this 
life,  joined  with  the  strong  propensity  of  nature  [=  "though  my 
soul  more  bent,"  &c.],  I  might  perhaps  leave  something  so  written 
to  aftertimes  as  they  should  not  willingly  let  it  die  ? '  He  had  long 
been  '  covenating '  with  his  '  knowing '  readers  for  the  performance 
of  that  work  which  a  patriotic  devotion  to  public  duties  prevented. 
But  now,  his  grand  purpose  still  unfulfilled — nay,  the  work  perhaps 
not  yet  even  begun — simultaneously  with  the  prospect  of  leisure, 
blindness  is  come  upon  him, — the  long-impending  '  damp  '  has 
fallen  at  last  thick  and  deep  '  round  his  path  ; '  and  though  in  this, 
as  in  all  things,  he  bows  with  sublime  patience  and  submission  to 
God's  will,  his  '  glorious  great  intent '  and  a  pathetic  sense  of  his 
infirmity  are  seen  burning  together  henceforward  at  his  mighty  heart. 

'  Nor  sometimes  forget 
Those  other  two  equalled  with  me  in  fate, 
So  were  I  equalled  with  them  in  renown, 
Blind  Thamyris  and  blind  Mseonides, 
And  Tiresias  and  Phineus,  prophets  old.' 


348  Notes 

loljit  ililtoit. 

PAGE 

The  day  was  yet  in  store  when,  '  amidst  the  hymns  and  hallelujahs 
of  saints,'  he  should  'be  heard  offering  at  high  strains  in  new  and 
lofty  measures  to  sing  and  celebrate  '  the  '  divine  mercies  and  mar- 
vellous judgments'  of  God  {Of  Reformation  in  England,  1641,  bk. 
ii).  It  is  deeply  instructive  to  note  that  what  even  Milton  him- 
self could  not  but  regard  as  a  disqualification  for  that  work  should 
prove  a  positive  qualification  for  it.  On  this  point  see  Macaulay's 
essay  on  Dryden  {Miscellaneous  Writings,  ed.  i860,  i,  209")  ;  and, 
for  some  interesting  speculations  as  to  the  influence  of  Milton's 
blindness  on  his  poetry,  Masson's  edition  of  the  Poetical  Works, 
as  before,  i,  104-111. 
76 — CL.  '  Of  the  virtuous  son,'  says  Warton,  '  nothing  has  transpired.* 
Masson  includes  him  in  his  list  of  Milton's  pupils,  and  informs  us 
that  he  was  the  second  son  of  Henry  Lawrence,  of  St.  Ives,  Hunts, 
member  for  Westmoreland  in  the  Long  Parliament,  known  in  1647 
as  a  thoughtful  man,  and  author  of  a  treatise  Of  our  Communion 
and  Warre  with  Angells  (1646),  afterwards  a  staunch  Oliverian, 
President  of  Cromwell's  Council,  and  one  of  his  Lords.  For  some 
further  interesting  particulars  regarding  President  Lawrence  and  his 
writings  see  a  communication  by  Mr.  J,  E.  Bailey  in  Notes  and 
Queries,  28  June,  1879.  The  sonnet  was  addressed  to  the  younger 
Lawrence  subsequent  to  1655,  and  when  Milton  had  become  totally 
blind.  Favonius  =  the  Spring  wind.  Ben  Jonson  was  fond  of  the 
synonym  {A  Private  Entertainment,  &c.,  1604 :  Workes,  1616,  p. 

'  Favonius  here  shall  blow 
New  flowers.' 

10-12.  Cp.  a  companion  passage  in  the  Tractate  of  Education 
(1644),  where,  having  prescribed  certain  active  exercises  for  the 
pupils  of  his  ideal  Academy,  he  goes  on  to  say  (p.  113,  ed.  1673) : 
'  The  interim  of  unsweating  themselves  regularly,  and  convenient 
rest  before  meat,  may,  both  with  profit  and  delight,  be  taken  up  in 
recreating  and  composing  their  travail'd  spirits  with  the  Solemn 
and  divine  harmonies  of  Musick,  heard  or  learnt ;  either  while  the' 
skilful  Organist  plies  his  grave  and  fancied  descant,  in  lofty  fugues, 
or  the  whole  Symphony  with  artful  and  unimaginable  touches 
adorn  and  grace  the  well-studied  chords  of  some  choice  Composer  ; 
sometimes  the  Lute  or  soft  Organ-stop  waiting  on  elegant  Voices, 
either  to  Religious,  martial,  or  civil  Ditties  ;  which,  if  wise  men  and 
Prophets  be  not  extreamly  out,  have  a  great  power  over  dispositions 
and  manners,  to  smooth  and  make  them  gentle  frum  rustick  harsh- 
ness and  distemper'd  passions.'     Cp.  also  Paradise  Lost,  xi,  561— 


Notes  349 

PAGE 

'  his  volant  touch 
Instinct  through  all  proportions  low  and  high 
Fled  and  pursued  transverse  the  resonant  fugue ' — 
on  which  the  Clarendon  editor  notes  :   '  Professor  Taylor's  opinion 
of  this  passage  was  that  its  pregnant  meaning  can  be  fully  appre- 
ciated only  by  a  musician.   ' '  AH  other  poets  but  Milton  and  Shake- 
speare make  blunders  about  music  ;  they  never."'  13-14.  spare  To 
interpose  them  oft.    '  Interpreted  by  Mr.  Keightley  to  mean  "  spare 
time  to  interpose  them  oft ; "  buj  surely  rather  the  opposite — refrain 
from  interposing  them  oft.' — Masson.     See  Drummond,  cxiv,  8, 
for  an  instance  of  the  word  in  precisely  the  same  sense. 
76— CLi.  Cyriack  Skinner,  one  of  Milton's  Aldersgate  Street  pupils, 
and  his  friend  through  after-years,  was  the  grandson  of  the  famous 
lawyer  and  judge,  Sir  Edward  Coke,  Chief  Justice  of  England. 
The  sonnet  may  be  supposed  to  have  been  written  somewhere 
about  1655.     L.  6.     '  This  is  the  decent  mirth  of  Martial : 
"  Nox  non  ebria,  sed  soluta  curis."  ' — T.   Warton. 
Cp.  Shakspeare  {Romeo  and  Juliet,  ii,  6,  81)  : 

'  So  smile  the  heavens  upon  this  holy  act, 
That  after-hours  with  sorrow  chide  us  not !  * 
i7itends  (MS.)  :  '  intend  '  (1673). 
77 — CLii,  1-2.  So  in  the  Defensio  Secunda  (1654),  transl.  Symmons  : 
'  The  spirit  and  the  power  which  I  [formerly]  possessed  continue  un- 
impaired to  the  present  day;  my  eyes  only  are  not  the  same;  and 
they  are  as  unblemished  in  appearance, as  lucid  and  free  from  spot, as 
those  which  are  endued  with  the  sharpest  vision  :  in  this  instance 
alone,  and  much  against  my  own  inclination,  am  I  a  deceiver. '  Hazlitt 
{Table  Talk,  p.  245,  ed.  1869)  remarks  what  seems  to  be  a  trait  of 
character  in  these  verses  :  that  Milton  had  not  yet  given  up  all  regard 
to  personal  appearance — 'a  feeling  to  which  his  singular  beauty  at  an 
earlier  age  might  be  supposed  natually  enough  to  lead.'  4-6.  Cp. 
Paradise  Lost,  iii,  22-26,40  j^^r.y  and  Samson  A gonistes,  ?>oseq.  L.  7. 
Heaven's  :  '  God's '  deleted  (MS.)  ; «  .• '  one  '  (Phillips) ;  8-g.  Ivar .  .  . 
onward :  '  attend  to  steer  Uphillward  '  deleted  (MS.).  '  Well  might 
he,  who,  after  five  years  of  blindness,  had  the  courage  to  undertake 
these  two  vast  works,  [his  treatise  on  Christian  Doctrine,  and  pro- 
jected Latin  dictionary,]  along  with  Paradise  Lost,  declare  that  he 
did  "not  bate  a  jot  Of  heart  or  hope,  but  still  bore  up  and  steered 
Uphilhuard."  For  this  is  the  word  which  Milton  at  first  used  in 
his  noble  sonnet  ;  though  for  the  sake  of  correctness,  steering  np hi II- 
wardhting  a  kind  of  pilotage  which  he  alone  practist,or  which  at  all 
events  is  only  practicable  where  the  clogs  of  this  material  world  are 
not  dragging  us  down,  he  altered  it  into  7ight  onward.' —{Guesses  at 


55° 


PAGE 


Notes 


foljit    piltoit. 


Truth,  p.  75,  First  Series,  3rd  ed.,  1847).  coriscience  =  conscious- 
ness ;  as  e.g.,  our  authorized  Version,  1  Cor.  viii,  7  ;  and  Heb.  x,  2. 
Perhaps  Keats  furnishes  a  late  instance  in  cccvill,  11.     LI.  lo-ii. 
As  early  as  1644  Milton's  sight  had  begun  to  decline,  and  in  1650, 
while  engaged  on  the  (first)  Dcfensio  pro  Poptdo  Anglicano  (1651), 
one  of  his  eyes  being  almost  gone,  he  was  warned  by  his  physicians 
that  total  blindness  would  certainly  ensue  if  he  proceeded  with  his 
task.  Our  liberties  know  whether  or  not  he  did  proceed  ;  and  after- 
wards, in  his,  Dcfensio  Secunda,  published  in  1654  (the  year  before 
that  in  which  it  is  supposed  the  sonnet  was  written)  in  reply  to  the 
Regit  Sanguinis  Clamor,  &c.  (1652),  he  could  tell  his  coarse  and 
unfeeling  adversary,  who  had  mocked  at  his  blindness,  that  the 
dread  penalty  had  been  cheerfully  incurred  in  preference  to  the  de- 
sertion of  a  sacred  duty.  12.  rings  (Phillips)  :  '  talks  '  (MS.,  adopted 
by  Newton).    The  echo  from  Sir  John  Harington's  Orlando  Furioso 
(1591)  seems  to  have  escaped  notice  (Booke  xlvi,  st.  55,  p.  399) : 
'  Nor  feates  of  Amies,  in  which  he  wan  the  prise, 
And  of  the  which  all  Europe  now  did  ring.' 
vain  mask.  Cp.  Ps.  xxxix,  6  :   '  Surely  every  man  walketh  in  a  vain 
sh.Qv/.'—Keightley.     Cp.  also  Lii,  3,  and  cxviii,  5.     See  reference 
to  this  sonnet  under  CXLV  (p.  343X 
77 — CLiil.     This  sonnet  is  assigned  by  Keightley  to  February,  1658, 
Milton's  second  and  best-beloved  wife,  Catherine  Woodcock,  hav- 
ing died  in  childbed  in  the  early  part  of  that  month  in  that  year.  2-4. 
See  the  ^/c^j^w  of  Euripides,  or  Mr.  Browning's  transcript,  Balaiis- 
tion'  s  Adventure  (\%']'i).   5-6.  'It  is  nowhere  said  in  the  Scriptures 
that  the  Hebrew  women  were  washed,  or  wore  white  at  their  purifi- 
cation after  childbed:  see  Lev.  xii.    Perhaps  however  Milton  does 
not  make  the  latter  assertion.' — Keightley.    Milton  does  not  do  so: 
he  refers  to  English  usage.  Speaking  of  the  sonnets,  in  his  admirable 
little  handbook  on  Milton  (1879,  P-  69),  Mr.  Stopford  Brooke  justly 
observes  :   '  Because  Milton  was  bitter  against  the  bad  woman  in 
Dalila,  because  he  held  strong  views  on  the  supremacy  of  man,  it 
has  been  too  much  forgotten  how  much  he  loved  and  honoured 
women  ...  in  the  sonnets,  he  sketches,  with  all  the  care  and  con- 
centration the  sonnet  demands,  and  each  distinctively,  four  beauti- 
ful types  of  womanhood — the  "virgin  wise  and  pure;  "  the  noble 
matron,  "honoured  Margaret ;  "  the  Christian  woman,  his  friend, 
whose  "works,  and  alms,  and  good  endeavour"  followed  her  to 
the  pure  immortal  streams  ;  the  perfect  wife,  whom  he  looked  to 
see  in  heaven— 


Notes  351 

PAGE 

"  Love,  sweetness,  goodness,  in  her  person  shine 
So  clear,  as  in  no  face  with  more  delight."  ' 

72-77 — CXLlll-CLiii.   These,  with  the  exception  of  CXLV  and  the  three 

specified  under  it  (p.  343),  are  given  from  Poems,  Cs^c,  Upon  Sevo-al 

Occasio!7s.     By  Mr.  John  Milton  :  Both  English  and  Latin,  ^'c. 

Composed  at  several  times.     With  a  small  Tractate  of  Education  To 

Mr.  IlariUb.     1673  :  where  they  first  appeared. 


79 — CLiv.  The  author  of  The  Canons  of  Criticism,  at  whom  Pope  made 
an  impotent  thrust  in  the  Dunciad  for  his  Shakspearian  studies,  ex- 
celled much  more  as  a  critic  than  as  a  poet ;  yet  he  shares  with  Gray 
and  Stillingfleet  the  honour  of  having  preserved  the  tradition  of  the 
Sonnet  at  a  time  when  it  seemed  threatened  with  absolute  extinc- 
tion.  His  experiments  belong  to  that  class  of  verse,  usually  the  pro- 
duction of  thoughtful  and  highly-cultivated  minds,  in  which  the  lack 
of  poetry's  diviner  attributes  is  in  some  measure  compensated  by 
what  Coleridge  calls  'weighty  bullion  sense.'  In  this  instance  mustbe 
added  much  practical  wisdom,  patriotism,  and  a  manly,  unaffected 
piety.     Dyce,  who  takes  five  of  his  sonnets  nevertheless,  denies 
Edwards  genius  ;  nor  perhaps  does  he  possess  genius  in  the  strict 
sense  ;  but,  like  Stillingfleet,  he  was  a  true  disciple  of  Milton,  and 
it  really  argues  something  akin  to  genius  to  have  had  in  liis  day  the 
sagacity  to  choose  and  the  ability  to  eclio  such  a  master.  His  Sonnets, 
numbering  about  fifty  in  all,  a  moiety  of  which  had  apppeared  in  dif- 
ferent editions  of  Dodsley's  Collection  of  Poems  (3rd  ed.,  1751),  were 
collected  and  appended  to  The  Canons  of  Criticism,  6th  ed. ,  with  Ad- 
ditions, 1758,  from  which  I  select  other  two  examples,  in  the  former 
of  which,  Dyce  remarks,  Edwards  '  rises  to  pathos  and  grandeur.' 
ON  A   FAMILY-PICTURE. 
When  pensive  on  that  Portraiture  I  gaze, 
Where  my  four  Brothers  round  about  me  stand, 
And  four  fair  Sisters  smile  with  graces  bland, 
The  goodly  monument  of  happier  days  ; 
And  think  how  soon  insatiate  Death,  who  preys 
On  all,  has  cropp'd  the  rest  with  ruthless  hand, 
While  only  I  survive  of  all  that  band. 
Which  one  chaste  bed  did  to  my  Father  raise  ; 
It  seems  that  like  a  Column  left  alone, 
The  tottering  remnant  of  some  splendid  Fane, 
'Scap'd  from  the  fury  of  the  barbarous  Gaul, 
And  wasting  Time,  which  has  the  rest  o'erthro^vn, 
Amidst  our  House's  ruins  I  remain 
Single,  unpropp'd,  and  nodding  to  my  fall. 


352  Notes 

TO   THE  AUTHOR  OF  OBSERVATIONS  ON  THE 

CONVERSION    AND   APOSTLESHIP    OF   ST.    PAUL. 

O  Lyttleton,  great  meed  shalt  thou  receive, 

Great  meed  of  fame,  Thou  and  thy  learn'd  Compeer, 

Who,  'gainst  the  Sceptic's  doubt  and  Scorner's  sneer, 

Assert  those  Heav'n-born  truths  which  you  believe  ! 

In  elder  times  thus  Heroes  wont  t'  atchieve 

Renown  ;  they  held  the  faith  of  Jesus  dear, 

And  round  their  Ivy  crown  or  Laurell'd  spear 

Blush'd  not  Religion's  Olive  branch  to  weave  ; 

Thus  Ralegh,  thus  immortal  Sidney  shone, 

(Illustrious  names  !)  in  great  Elisa's  days. 

Nor  doubt  his  promise  firm,  that  such  who  own 

In  evil  times,  undaunted,  though  alone. 

His  glorious  truth,  such  He  will  crown  with  praise, 

And  glad  agnize  before  his  Father's  throne. 

The  person  to  whom  the  sonnet  in  the  text  is  addressed  was  the 
author  of  The  Scribleriad {\-]^\),  of  whom  see  a  notice  in  Gary's  Lives  of 
English  Poets,  from  fohnson  to  Kirke  White.  Designed  as  a  Continua- 
tion of  Johnsons  Lives.  1846.  Gambridge  retired  about  1750  to  his 
villa  at  Twickenham,  where  he  died  in  i8o2. 

I^fiijamiir  ^tillingflat. 

PAGE 

80 — CLV,  14.  echoes  : '  tidings '  (Coxe).  This  noble  sonnet,  by  much  the 
best  of  the  few  written  by  '  Blue  Stocking  '  Stillingfleet,  grandson  of 
the  Bishop,  was  first  printed  by  Todd  in  his  edition  of  Milton's 
Poetical  Works  (iSoi,  v,  p.  445),  where  it  is  dated  1746.  From  the 
Literary  Life  h^  Goxe  prefixed  to  Stillingfleet's  Select  Works,  1811, 
we  learn  that  the  amiable  and  eccentric  person  commemorated  in  it 
was  the  Rev.  John  Williamson,  a  man  of  great  learning  and  varied 
accomplishments,  whose  extreme  simplicity  of  character  and  igno- 
rance of  the  world  hindered  his  preferment.  By  the  departure  from 
Scotland  of  Lord  Haddington  and  his  brother  Mr.  Baillie,  to  whom 
he  had  formerly  been  travelling  companion,  Williamson  was  thrown 
out  of  employment  ;  and  Stillingfleet,  his  congenial  and  attached 
friend,  amid  many  troubles  of  his  own,  made  unceasing  efforts  to 
procure  him  some  permanent  establishment,  but  without  much  or 
any  immediate  success.  Ultimately,  however,  Williamson  received 
the  appointment  of  Chaplain  to  the  Factory  at  Lisbon.  Coxe  further 
informs  us  that  among  the  memoTanda  for  his  History  of  Htisbandry, 
Stillingfleet  has  an  affectionate  tribute  to  his  friend's  memory  in 
which  he  compares  him  with — Xenophon :  'He  was  not  inferior  to  the 
Grecian  in  simplicity,  parts,  or  knowledge,  as  he  might  have  shewn, 


Notes  353 

PAGE 

had  not  a  general  calamity  [the  Earthquake  at  Lisbon,  on  which 
Stillingfleet  published  a  small  quarto  of  moral  reflections  in  verse, 
1750]  deprived  the  world  of  his  ingenious  writings.'  He  seems  to 
have  been  universally  beloved.  Neville,  one  of  his  friends,  thus 
records  his  death  :  '  Early  in  the  year  1763,  this  godlike  man  was, 
about  his  50th  year,  relieved  from  all  his  infirmities,  and  gath- 
ered to  his  kindred  angels.  He  left  just  enough  to  buiy  him,  and 
would  have  left  no  more  if  he  had  been  Archbishop  of  Canterbury.' 
Capel  Lofft  inserted  the  sonnet  in  his  Laura  (5  vols.,  1813-14), 
with  the  remark  that  had  Stillingfleet  left  nothing  else  behind  him, 
it  would  have  been  sufficient  to  immortalize  his  name.  Todd 
justly  observes  that  it  proves  how  attentively  and  how  successfully 
Milton  was  studied  at  this  time.  So  also,  in  its  degree,  does  his 
sonnet  {Select  Works,  ii,  163) 

TO    DAM  PIER. 
Thrice  worthy  guardian  of  that  sacred  spring, 
That  erst  with  copious  stream  enrich'd  this  land. 
When  C^sar  taught  our  nobles  to  command, 
Tully  to  speak,  Maeonides  to  sing  ; 
Till  Fashion,  stealing  with  unheeded  wing 
Into  this  realm,  with  touch  of  foreign  hand. 
Our  girls  embolden'd,  and  our  boys  unmann'd, 
And  drew  all  ages  to  her  magic  ring. 
Yet  shalt  not  thou  be  backward  in  thy  sphere 
To  thwart  a  sickly  world  ;  the  sceptre  giv'n 
Thou  know'st  to  wield,  and  force  the  noble  youth 
To  merit  titles  they  were  born  to  bear. 
Thou  know'st  that  every  sceptre  is  from  Heaven 
That  guides  mankind  to  virtue  and  to  truth.' 

80— CLVI.  From  The  Poems  of  Mr.  Gray.  To  -which  are  prefixed  Me- 
moirs of  his  Life  and  Writings,  by  W.Mason,  M.A.  York  :  1775. 
L.  2.  'I  believe,'  says  Lowell  {My  Study  Windows,  Boston,  1871, 
p.  388),  '  it  has  not  been  noticed  that  among  the  verses  in  Gray's 
"  Sonnet  on  the  Death  of  West,y  which  Wordsworth  condemns  as 
of  no  value,  the  second  is  one  of  Gray's  happy  reminiscences  from 
a  poet  in  some  respects  greater  than  either  of  them  {Lucrct.,  iv, 
405-6)  :— 

Jamque  rubrum  tremulis  jubar  ignibus  erigere  alte 

Cum  ccEptat  natura.' 
14.  Park  {Heliconia,  1815,  ii,  154)  notes  the  following  parallel  m 
Fitzgeffrey's  Life  and  Death  of  Sir  Francis  Drake,  which  was  pub- 

» '  Rev.  Dr.  Dampier,  then  one  of  the  upper  masters  of  Eton  School,  and  afterwards 
Dean  of  Durham,  an  intimate  and  much  respected  friend  of  Mr.  Stilhngfleet.  —Coxe. 


354  ^(^^^^ 

PAGE 

lished  in  1596,  '  and  which,'  he  adds,  '  from  its  rareness,  it  is  very 
unlikely  that  Mr.  Gray  had  ever  seen  : ' — 

'  O  therefore  do  we  plaine, 
And  therefore  weepe,  because  we  weepe  in  vaine.' 

'  Both  Wordsworth  and  Coleridge  have  found  fault  with  Gray's 
sonnet  on  Richard  West,  asserting  that  the  diction  is  artificial,  and 
the  images  incongruous.  Leigh  Hunt,  on  the  contrary  \^Book  of 
the  Sonnet,  i,  81-3],  defends  it  on  the  same  ground  that  he  would 
defend  the  Lycidas  of  Milton,  and  avers  that  men  so  imbued  with  the 
classics  can  speak  from  their  hearts  in  such  language.  Gray  was  a 
purist,  but  he  never  threw  off  entirely  the  conventional  phrase- 
ology which  was  at  one  time  regarded  as  the  language  of  poetry. 
His  odes,  for  example,  abound  with  terms  which  a  third-rate  poet 
of  our  day  would  reject  as  turgid  or  artificial,  but  we  think  with 
Hunt,  that  this  sonnet,  the  only  one  Gray  ever  produced,  is  very 
beautiful,  and  that  the  allusion  in  it  to  Phoebus  may  be  justi- 
fied. "We  are  too  much  in  the  habit,"  he  writes,  "  of  losing  a 
living  notion  of  the  sun.  .  .  .  Phoebus  in  this  instance,  is  not  a 
word  out  of  the  dictionaries,  but  a  living  celestial  presence."' — 
John  Dennis  {English  Sonnets  :  A  Selection.     1873). 

81 — CLVii.  'Exoxa.Mxi  Poems.  Now  First  Published.  York  :  1797.  One 
of  three  sonnets,  composed  by  Mason  on  his  three  last  birthdays, 
of  which  Sou  they  in  The  Doctor  observes,  that  for  their  sentiment 
and  their  beauty  they  ought  to  be  inserted  in  every  volume  of  se- 
lect poems  for  popular  use.  Here  at  least  we  have  none  of  the 
falsetto  of  which  Coleridge  {Table  Talk,  p.  201,  ed.  1S51)  came  to 
detect  so  much  in  the  Caractacus. 

(Cljomas  SSartoit. 

One  of  the  firstfruits  of  the  revival  of  a  taste  for  Italian  and  our  own 
early  literature  was  the  resumption  of  the  sonnet-form  as  a  literary  in- 
strument. Like  many  other  beautiful  things  this  '  fair  consummate 
flower '  had  died  with  Milton,  and  would  not  '  recover  greenness '  till 
the  freezing-rod  of  France  had  been  lifted  from  off  the  land.' 

1  An  amusing  illustration  of  the  contempt  into  which  the  depravity  of  the  national 

t;iste  had  brought   the  Sonnet  and  '  things  of  that  nature  '  during  this  inauspicious 

period,  IS  furnished  in  the  apologetic  tone  which  it  behoved  Philip  Ayres  to  adopt  in 

siibmming  to  the  public  his  Lyric  Foems,  made  in  imitation  of  the  Italians  (1687). 

If  any  quarrel,'  says  this  worthy  in  his  Preface,  '  at  the  Oeconomy,  or  Structure  of 


Notes  355 

'  It  was  gone 
Quite  under  ground  ;  as  flowers  depart 
To  see  their  mother-root,  when  they  have  blown  ; 
Where  they  together 
All  the  hard  weather, 
Dead  to  the  world,  keep  house  unknown.' 

It  rose,  as  we  have  seen,  with  Gray,  Edwards,  and  Stillingflect,  midway 
in  the  centuiy,  and  immediately  thereafter  we  find  it  receiving  express 
cultivation,  just  where  one  naturally  seeks — in  the  Warton  family.  T. 
Warton's  sonnets  are  constructed  on  the  Italian  or  Proven9al  model ;  and 
Hazlitt,  with  whom  they  were  eminent  favourites,  has  described  them  as 
'  undoubtedly  exquisite,  both  in  style  and  matter  :  poetical  and  philoso- 
phical effusions  of  very  delightful  sentiment  ;'  elsewhere  declaring  that 
he  'could  not  help  preferring  them  to  any  in  the  language.'  '  And 
Leight  Hunt  again  :  '  Some  of  them  express  real  feelings  with  an  ele- 
gance so  scholarly,  so  simple,  and  so  full  of  faith,  that  no  universalist  in 
the  love  of  poetry  who  has  once  read  them  chooses  to  part  with  them.'  * 
They  were  praised  also  by  Coleridge,  who,  however,  regarded  the  greater 
part  of  them  as  not  strictly  sonnets  at  all,  but  '  severe  and  masterly 
likenesses  of  the  style  of  the  Greek  ETCiypo ui-iata.' '^  'But,' says 
Dyce  on  citing  Coleridge's  opinion,  '  I  must  be  allowed  to  think  that 
they  want  the  great  charm  of  the  ancient  epigrams, — simplicity.''' 

PAGE 

8i — CLVili.  landscape's  :  'landskip's'  (1777).  '  "  Landskip  "  is  less 
divergent  fro:n  the  old  Anglo-Saxon  form  of  the  word,  "  land- 
scipe,"  than  the  "  landscape"  of  our  modern  orthography.' — T. 
Arnold  {Addison's  Papers,  Clar.  Press,  1875,  p.  4S9).  Warton's 
editor,  Bishop  Mant,  prints  along  with  this  a  pleasing  sonnet  by 
old  Dr.  Warton,  the  poet's  father,  written  after  a  visit  to  Windsor 
Castle  with  his  sons  in  their  early  youth,  which  was  evidently  the 
germ  from  which  the  laureate's  afterwards  sprung.  (PoetlcallVorks, 
1802,  ii,  154). 

these  Poems,  manv  of  them  heing  Sonnets,  Canzons,  Madrigals,  &c.,  objecting  that 
none  of  our  great  Men,  either  Mr.  Waller,  Mr.  Cowley,  or  Mr.  Dryden,  whom  it  was 
most  proper  to  have  followed,  have  everstoop'd  to  any  thing  of  this  sort ;  I  shall  very 
readily  acknowledge,  that  being  sensible  of  my  own  Weakness  and  Inability  of  ever 
attaining  to  the  performance  of  one  thing  equal  to  the  worst  piece  of  theirs,  it  easily 
disswaded  me  from  that  attempt,  and  put  me  on  this  :  which  is  not  without  President ; 
For  many  eminent  Persons  have  published  several  thirgs  of  this  nature,  and  in  this 
method,  both  Translations  and  Poems  of  their  own  ;  As  the  famous  Mr.  Spencer,  Sir 
Philip  Sidney,  Sir  Richard  Fanshaw,  Mr.  Milton,  and  some  few  others  ;  Ihe  success 
of  all  which,  in  these  things,  I  must  needs  say,  cannot  much  be  boasted  of ;  and  though 
1  have  little  reason  after  it,  to  expect  Credit  from  these  my  slight  Miscellanies,  yet  has 
it  not  discouraged  me  from  adventuring  on  what  my  Genius  prompted  me  to. 

1  Table  Talk,  p.  242,  ed.  1869,  and  Select  Poets,  1825,  p.  xv. 

"  Book  0/ the  Sonnet,  i,  84. 

5  Poevts.  2nd  ed.,  1797,  Intro,  to  the  Sonnets,  p.  72, 

'^  Specimens  oy  English  Sonnets,  p.  216. 


356  Notes 


PAGE 


5^I)omas  ©lartoit. 


82 — CLIX.   he  =  his  brother,  Dr.  Joseph  Warton.  This  sonnet,  written 
about  1750,  was  first  published  in  the  iv'"  vol.  of  Dodsley's  Collec- 
tion of  Foe>?is,  1755  ;  as  also  this  {Poems,  I777>  P-  76),  which  seems 
to  have  been  Coleridge's  favourite  in  early  days,  as  it  was  the  only 
one  of  Warton's  chosen  by  him  for  the  little  privately-printed 
selection  described  in  foot-note,  page  362. 
ON  BA  THING. 
When  late  the  trees  were  stript  by  winter  pale, 
Young  Health,  a  dryad-maid  in  vesture  green, 
Or  like  the  forest's  silver-quiver'd  queen, 
On  airy  uplands  met  the  piercing  gale  ; 
And,  ere  its  earliest  echo  shook  the  vale, 
Watching  the  hunter's  joyous  horn  was  seen. 
But  since,  gay-thron'd  in  fiery  chariot  sheen. 
Summer  has  smote  each  daisy-dappled  dale  ; 
She  to  the  cave  retires,  high-arch 'd  beneath 
The  fount  that  laves  proud  Isis'  towered  brim  : 
And  now,  all  glad  the  temperate  air  to  breathe, 
While  cooling  drops  distill  from  arches  dim, 
Binding  her  dewy  locks  with  sedgy  wreath. 
She  sits  beneath  the  quire  of  Naiads  trim. 

CLX,  5.  Alluding  to  the  dissolution  of  the  monasteries  under 
Henry  VIII.  This  sonnet,  which  Crabb  Robinson  in  his  Diary 
tells  us  Charles  Lamb  praised  as  of  '  first-rate  excellence,'  seems  to 
to  have  been  the  prototype  followed,  consciously  or  unconsciously, 
by  some  later  poets  in  dealing  with  similar  themes  ;  by  Keats,  for 
example,  in  his  sonnet  on  Leigh  Hunt's  liberation  from  prison 
{Poems,  1817,  p.  81),  and  Thomas  Doubleday  in  the  following 
(Literary  Souve'iiir,  1827,  p.  202) : — 

THE  FOETS  SOLITUDE. 

Think  not  the  Poet's  life,  although  his  cell 

Be  seldom  printed  by  the  stranger's  feet, 

Hath  not  its  silent  plenitude  of  sweet. 

Look  at  yon  lone  and  solitary  dell ; — 

The  stream  that  loiters  'mid  its  stones  can  tell 

What  flowerets  its  unnoted  waters  meet. 

What  odours  o'er  its  narrow  margin  fleet  ; 

Ay,  and  the  Poet  can  repeat  as  well, — 

The  fox-glove,  closing  inly,  like  the  shell ; 

The  hyacinth  ;  the  rose,  of  buds  the  chief  ; 

The  thorn,  be-diamonded  with  dewy  showers  ; 

The  thyme's  wild  fragrance,  and  the  heather-bell : 

All,  all,  are  there.     So  vain  is  the  belief 

That  the  sequestered  path  hath  fewest  flowers. 

Thomas  Doubleday. 
81-83— CLViii-CLXii.     From  his  Poems,  1777. 


Notes 


357 


SKillram  Cofaptr. 

PAGE 

84 — CLXIII.  This  little  masterpiece,  first  printed  in  Hayley's  Life  and 
Fost/nimous  Writings  of  the  poet  (1803,  ii,  43),  and  given  here 
from  the  Poems,  1815,  iii,  222,  has  called  forth  the  following  fine 
criticism  from  Mr.  Palgrave  {Golden  Treasury,  p.  319) :  '  The  Ed- 
itor knows  no  Sonnet  more  remarkable  than  this,  which  records 
Cowper's  gratitude  to  the  Lady  whose  affectionate  care  for  many 
years  gave  what  sweetness  he  could  enjoy  to  a  life  radically  wretched. 
Petrarch's  sonnets  have  a  more  ethereal  grace  and  a  more  perfect 
finish ;  Shakespeare's  more  passion ;  Milton's  stand  supreme  in  state- 
liness,  Wordsworth's  in  depth  and  delicacy.  But  Cowper's  unites  with 
an  exquisiteness  in  the  turn  of  thought  which  the  ancients  would 
have  called  Irony,  an  intensity  of  pathetic  tenderness  peculiar  to  his 
loving  and  ingenuous  nature. — There  is  much  mannerism,  much 
that  is  unimportant  or  of  now  exhausted  interest  in  his  poems  :  but 
where  he  is  great,  it  is  with  that  elementary  greatness  which  rests 
on  the  most  universal  human  feelings.  Cowper  is  our  highest 
master  in  simple  pathos.'  I  add  another  sonnet  (also  first  printed 
by  Hayley),  addressed  to  the  '  kinsman  beloved  '  who  edited  the 
volumes  from  which  that  in  the  text  was  given.  Both  sonnets  are 
dated  May,  1793.  {Poetns,  1815,  iii,  223): 
TO    JOHN    JOHNSON. 

ON   HIS   PRESENTING   ME   WITH    AN   ANTIQUE   BUST  OF   HOMER. 

Kinsman  belov'd,  and  as  a  son,  by  me  ! 

When  I  behold  this  fruit  of  thy  regard, 

The  sculptur'd  form  of  my  old  fav'rite  bard, 

I  rev'rence  feel  for  him,  and  love  for  thee. 

Joy  too,  and  grief.      Much  joy  that  there  should  be 

Wise  men  and  learn'd,  who  grudge  not  to  reward 

With  some  applause  my  bold  attempt  and  hard, 

Which  others  scorn  :  Critics  by  courtesy. 

The  grief  is  this,  that  sunk  in  Homer's  mine 

I  lose  my  precious  years,  now  soon  to  fail, 

Handling  this  gold,  which,  howsoe'er  it  shine, 

Proves  dross  when  balanced  in  the  Christian  scale. 

Be  wiser  thou  ! — like  our  forefather  Donne, 

Seek  heav'nly  wealth,  and  work  for  God  alone. 

CXXIV.  From  Original  Sonnets  on  Various  Subjects,  &c. ,  2nd  ed., 
1799.  In  a  letter  to  a  friend,  dated  Lichfield,  Dec.  29,  1795  {Let- 
ters, iv,  1811,  142-8),  the  authoress  recalls  the  circumstances  of  the 
composition  of  this  sonnet.  Having  wished  her  correspondent  the 
compliments  of  the  season,  and  quoted  (or  rather  misquoted)  ^az^ 
let  thus  : 


358  Notei 


PAGE 


'  The  bird  of  dawning  singeth  all  night  long  ; 
No  ghost  can  walk,  no  witch  hath  power  to  harm, 
So  hallow'd,  and  so  gracious  is  the  time  ' — 

she  says  :  '  I  awoke  at  six  on  Christmas-day  ;  and,  on  hearing  the 
cocks  of  the  neighbourhood  cheerily  answering  each  other,  recol- 
lected that  passage  with  thrills  of  delight.  It  chased  the  mists 
of  slumber,  so  I  rang  for  my  fire  and  arose.  My  dressing-room 
windows  look  upon  the  cathedral  area,  which  is  a  green  lawn,  en- 
circled by  prebendal  houses,  and  they  are  rough-cast.  The  glim- 
mer of  the  scene,  through  the  dusk  of  a  December  morning  at  seven, 
produced  the  following  sonnet,  several  years  ago  [Dec.  19,  1782], 
from  my  pen.'  Wordsworth,  writing  to  Dyce  {Prose  IVorks,  iii, 
301),  notes  the  '  fine  verses '  at  the  close  of  another  sonnet  (Oft^inal 
Sonnets,  &c.,  p.  43  :  Invitation  to  a  Friend)  : 

'  Come,  that  I  may  not  hear  the  winds  of  Night, 
Nor  count  the  heavy  eave-drops  as  they  fall ' — 

an  image  doubtless  borrowed  from  Bampfylde  (as  under  CCXLI) : 

'Counting  the  frequent  drop  from  reeded  eaves.' 

Cbarlotte  ^mitlj. 

85 — CLXV.  Aneinonies-—  'Anemony  Numeroso:  the  Wood  Anemony.' — 
'  S.  L.  14.  Echoed  by  Barry  Cornwall  (Dedicatory  Sonnet:  A  Sici- 
lian Story,  &c.,  1820)  : 

'  O,  why  has  happiness  so  short  a  day  ! ' 

From  Elegiac  Sonnets,  and  Other  Essays.     1784. 

CLXVI.  lay.  An  instance  of  the  vulgar  confusion  of  the  verbs  lie 

and  lay,  of  which  even  Pope  and  Byron  are  not  guiltless.     From 

Elegiac  Sonnets.      The  Third  Edition.      With  Twenty  Additiotial 

Sonnets.  [1786.] 
The  unmitigable  woe  with  which  Mrs.  Smith's  poems  are  filled, 
together  with  their  factitious  and  second-hand  phraseology,  renders  them 
unpalatable  to  a  generation  so  much  healthier  than  that  in  which  they 
were  produced  ;  yet  we  must  respect  the  opinion  of  so  admirable  a  critic 
as  Wordsworth,  who  described  her  as  '  a  lady  to  whom  English  verse  is 
under  greater  obligations  than  are  likely  to  be  either  acknowledged  or 
remembered.'  '  She  wrote  little,'  he  continues,  'and  that  little  unam- 
bitiously,  but  with  true  feeling  for  rural  Nature,  at  a  time  when  Nature 
was  not  much  regarded  by  English  Poets  ;  for  in  point  of  time  her  earlier 
writings  preceded,  I  believe,  those  of  Cowper  and  Burns. '  '  Her  Sonnets, 

*  Prose  Works,  1876,  iii,  151, 


Notes 


359 


about  which  some  of  their  old  sweetness  still  lingers,  like  the  perfume  of 
dried  flowers,  have  been  repeatedly  praised  by  Dyce.  They  are  '  not 
framed,'  he  remarks,  '  on  the  Italian  model,  and  exhibit  little  of  concen- 
trated thought;  but  they  are  "most  musical,  most  melancholy,"  and 
abound  with  touches  of  tenderness,  grace,  and  beauty.  ,  .  .  Her  love 
of  botany,  from  the  study  of  which  she  derived  the  greatest  pleasure,  has 
led  her,  in  several  of  her  pieces,  to  paint  a  variety  of  flowers  with  a 
minuteness  and  delicacy  rarely  equalled. ' '  Later,  he  characterizes  them 
as  poems  '  in  which  softly-coloured  description  and  touching  sentiment 
are  most  happily  combined."-  I  had  marked  several  sonnets  illustrating 
these  qualities,  but  space  being  limited,  confine  myself  to  an  example  of 
a  different  order,  if  not  in  all  respects  the  best,  certainly  the  most  mas- 
culine and  interesting  of  her  poems  (^Elegiac  Sonnets  and  Other  Poems, 
2  vols.,  1795-7,  ii,  p.  23)  :— 

TO    THE  SHADE  OF  BURNS. 
\       Mute  is  thy  wild  harp  now,  O  Bard  Sublime  ! 
Whom,  amid  Scotia's  mountain  solitude. 
Great  Nature  taught  to  'build  the  lofty  rhyme,' 
And,  even  beneath  the  daily  pressure  rude 
Of  labouring  Poverty,  thy  generous  blood 
Fired  with  the  love  of  freedom — Not  subdued 
Wert  thou  by  thy  low  fortune  :   But  a  time 
Like  this  we  live  in,  when  the  abject  chime 
Of  echoing  Parasite  is  best  approved. 
Was  not  for  thee.     Indignantly  is  fled 
Thy  noble  Spirit,  and,  no  longer  moved 
By  all  the  ills  o'er  which  thine  heart  has  bled, 
Associate  worthy  of  the  illustrious  dead. 
Enjoys  with  them  '  the  Liberty  it  loved.'  ^ 

PAGE 

86-CLXVil.  This  sonnet,  of  which  the  earliest  printed  impression  known 
to  me  is  in  The  Geiitleman  s  Magazine,  September,  1816,  probably 
made  its  first  appearance  in  one  of  the  Liverpool  newspapers. 
Excepting  the  title,  which  I  adopt  from  a  contemporaneous  draft, 
it  is  here  given  from  his  Poetical  Works,  Liverpool,  1853.     Those 

'  Sped  metis  0/  British  Poetesses,  1827,  p.  254. 

2  Specimens  0/ English  Sonnets,  1833,  p.  220.  See  also  a  pleasing  tribute  by  David 
Lester  Richardson  (Literary  Leaves.     Calcutta  :   1836,  pp.  377-386)- 

'  14.  'the  Liberty  it  loved.'— Vop^  (Epitaph  on  Sir  WilliamTrumbal.)  The 
poetess  has  a  note  as  follows:  '  Whoever  has  tasted  the  charm  of  original  genius  so 
evident  in  the  composition  of  this  genuine  Poet, 

A  Poet  "of  nature's  own  creation," 
cannot  surely  fail  to  lament  his  unhappy  life,  (latterly  passed,  as  I  have  understood,  in 
an  employmentto  which  such  a  mind  as  his  musthave  been  averse, >  nor  hispremature 
death.  For  one,  herself  made  the  object  o{subscription^f•'^'^\>''o^^e.x  to  add,  that  whoever 
has  thus  been  delighted  with  the  wild  notes  of  the  Scottish  bard,  must  have  a  melan- 
choly pleasure  in  relieving  by  their  benevolence  the  unfortunate  family  he  has  left?' 


360  '  Notes 

WMxvca  llostof. 

only  of  the  present  generation  will  need  to  be  informed  that  the 
event  which  called  forth  this  noble  expression  of  feeling  and  philo- 
sophic resignation  was    the  dispersion  of  the  Roscoe  Collection 
(August — September,  1816).   '  To  the  necessity  of  at  once  rendering 
available  not  only  the  assets  of  the  concern,  but  likewise  the  private 
property  of  the  partners,  Mr.  Roscoe  cheerfully  yielded,  and  he 
resolved  to  offer  to  public  sale,  without  delay,  the  whole  of  his 
personal  effects,  including  his  library,  pictures,  and  other  works  of 
art,  which  he  had  employed  himself  in  collecting  for  nearly  half  a 
century.     The  loss  of  other  portions  of  his  property  occasioned 
him,  personally,  little  regret,  but  he  could  not  avoid  regarding 
with  some  grief  the  prospect  of  parting  with  those  literary  treasures 
which  had  contributed  so  largely  both  to  his  happiness  and  his 
fame.  It  was  under  the  influence  of  these  feelings  that  [the]  sonnet 
was  written.'     {^The  Life  of  William  Roscoe,  by  his  Son,  Henry 
Roscoe,  1833,  ii,  112).     It  is  somewhat  remarkable  that  a  form  of 
verse  so  peculiarly  the  favourite  of  studious  men  as  the  Sonnet 
should  not  more  frequently  have  been  dedicated  to  '  the  honour  of 
books.'      Sublime  in  conception,  and  perfect   in  form,  Roscoe's 
sonnet  is  unapproached  by  anything  in  the  language  on  a  similar 
theme.  An  affinity  of  subject  therefore  is  my  only  reason  for  coupling 
it  here  with  the  following  by  a  gifted  lady  who  preferred  to  write 
her  sonnets  in  the  '  Shakspearian  stanza,'  as  to  her  mind  'abetter 
English  model  than  that  adopted  by  Milton'  {The  Dream,  and 
Other  Poems.     By  the  Honble.  Airs.  Norton,  1840,  p.  290)  : — 
TO  MV  BOOKS. 
Silent  companions  of  the  lonely  hour. 
Friends,  who  can  never  alter  or  forsake, 
Who  for  inconstant  roving  have  no  power, 
And  all  neglect,  perforce,  must  calmly  take, — 
Let  me  return  to  You  ;  this  turmoil  ending 
Which  worldly  cares  have  in  my  spirit  wrought. 
And,  o'er  your  old  familiar  pages  bending. 
Refresh  my  mind  with  many  a  tranquil  thought : 
Till,  haply  meeting  there,  from  time  to  time, 
Fancies,  the  audible  echo  of  my  own, 
'Twill  be  like  hearing  in  a  foreign  clime 
Aly  native  language  spoke  in  friendly  tone. 
And  with  a  sort  of  welcome  I  shall  dwell 
On  these,  my  unripe  musings,  told  so  well. 

Caroline  E.  S.  Stirling-Maxwell.^ 

'  2-3.  Cp.  Barry  Cornwall  to  his  Books  (Bryan  Waller  Procter:  An  Autobio- 
graphical Fragment,  &c.,  1877,  p.  236)  ; 

'  O  friends,  whom  chance  and  change  can  never  harm.' 


Notes  361 

f  elat  paria  Scilillhtms. 

PAGE 

86 — CLXVIII.  From  Julia,  A  Novel ;  interspersed  with  some  Poetical 
Pieces,  1790,  i,  204.  In  a  foot-note  on  this  sonnet,  to  the  'great 
merit '  of  which  Wordsworth  repeatedly  testified,  the  authoress  says 
{Poems  on  Various  Subjects,  &c.,  1823,  p.  203) :  '  I  commence  the 
Sonnets  with  that  to  Hope,  from  a  predilection  in  its  favour,  for 
which  I  have  a  proud  reason  :  it  is  that  of  Mr.  Wordsworth,  who 
lately  honoured  me  with  his  visits  while  at  Paris,  having  repeated 
it  to  me  from  memory,  after  a  lapse  of  many  years.' 

^rr  ^amiTcl  ©gcrtoit  ^rnbgcs. 

87 — CLXix.  First  published  among  his  Sonnets  and  other  Poems,  1785, 
where  it  is  dated  Oct.  20,  1782  :  given  here  from  the  4th  edition  of 
his  Poems,  1807.  Sir  Egerton,  whose  sonnet,  like  his  pedigree, 
occasioned  him  much  solicitude  during  life,  never  lost  an  oppor- 
tunity of  telling  all  about  it.  In  \{\'!,  Autobiography  {I'i^iA,  i,  63)  he 
records  :  '  About  the  year  1782  a  small  pamphlet  of  poems  fell  into 
my  hands,  by  the  Rev.  John  Walters,  who  had  gained  an  Oxford 
prize  for  English  verses,  of  which  I  forget  the  title,  unless  it  was 
"  The  Bodleian  Library."  A  few  short  inscriptions,  after  the 
Greek  manner,  pleased  me  very  much  ;  and  there  was  one  line, 

Echo  and  Silence,  sister-maids, 
which  suggested  my  own  sonnet  on  Echo  and  Silence.'  Elsewhere 
{Recollections  of  Foreign  Travel,  1825,  ii,  17)  we  find  him  vindicating 
his  ownership,  Coleridge  having  by  mistake  assigned  the  sonnet  to 
'  Henry  Brooks  [=  Brooke],  the  Author  of  the  Fool  of  Quality,' 
[and  Custavus  Vasa\,  in  his  little  Bowles-supplement.  '  It  ought 
Xo  be  original,'  says  Sir  Egerton,  '  for  it  cost  me  intensity  of 
thought  to  bring  it  into  so  narrow  a  shape.'  Very  possibly  the 
pains  it  cost  its  author  have  been  but  imperfectly  appreciated  ;  but 
it  has  surely  had  more  than  justice  done  its  poetical  merits  at  the 
hands  of  his  contemporaries,  especially  Southey,  Wordsworth,  and 
Leigh  Hunt,  whose  commendations '  have  not  a  little  availed  it  for 
a  place  in  this  Anthology. 

87-88 — CLXX-CLXXi.    Two  of  Fourteen  Somtets,  &c.,  published  anony- 
mously at  Bath,  1789.     Bowles's  sonnets  are  still  prized  in  some 

'  Vide  Brydges's  Autobiography,  1834,  ii,  262  ;  Wordsworth's  Prose  Works,  1876, 
iii,  333  ;  and  Leigh  Hunt's  Tendon  yournat,  ]u\y  23,  1834,  p.  134. 


362  Notes 

SKilliam  IT  isle  ^ofelcs. 

measure  for  their  own  charms  as  plaintive  and  graceful  effusions, 
but  they  possess  an  interest  greatly  exceeding  their  intrinsic  value, 
in  virtue  of  the  important  influence  they  chanced  to  exercise  on  the 
poetical  taste  of  his  youthful  contemporary,  S.  T.  Coleridge,  whose 
instinct  was  neither  untrue  nor  exceptional '  in  hailing  Bowles  as  a 
pioneer  of  the  coming  reform  in  English  poetry,  though  his  ardent 
temperament  led  him  into  an  excess  of  homage  at  times. '^  His 
early  sonnet-tribute  to  his  poetical  benefactor  is  very  fine  in  its 
best  form,  and  does  his  head  as  well  as  his  heart  credit  {Poetical 
Works,  1829,  i,  55) : 

My  heart  has  thanked  thee;  Bowles  !  for  those  soft  strains 

Whose  sadness  soothes  me,  like  the  murmuring 

Of  wild-bees  in  the  sunny  showers  of  spring  ! 

For  hence  not  callous  to  the  mourner's  pains 

Through  Youth's  gay  prime  and  thornless  paths  I  went : 

And  when  the  mightier  throes  of  mind  began, 

And  drove  me  forth,  a  thought-bewildered  man  ! 

Their  mild  and  manliest  melancholy  lent 

A  mingled  charm,  such  as  the  pang  consigned 

To  slumber,  though  the  big  tear  it  renewed  ; 

Bidding  a  strange  mysterious  Pleasure  brood 

Over  the  wavy  and  tumultuous  mind. 

As  the  great  Spirit  erst  with  plastic  sweep 

Moved  on  the  darkness  of  the  unformed  deep. 

S.  T.  Coleridge. 

The  following  sonnet  may  be  read  as  a  sequel  to  CLXXi  {Sonnets, 
&c.,  2nd  ed.,  Bath,  1789,  p.  22): 

1  'We  shall  never  forget,'  says  another  witness  (Gefitleinaji's  Magazine,  1833,  Ft. 
i,  p.  618),  'the  delight  with  which,  in  our  youthful  days,  the  sonnets  of  J>fr.  Boivles 
were  first  read  by  us  ;  we  admired  the  purity,  the  tenderness  of  their  thoughts,  the  fine 
and  delicate  selection  of  the  imagery,  the  touching  pathos  of  the  sentiments.  Their 
single  fault  was  that  in  their  subject  and  flow  of  verse  they  were  too  elegiac' 

2  A  copy  of  the  fourth  edition  of  Bowles's  Sonnets  and  Other  Poems,  ij()6,  pre- 
served in  the  South  Kensington  Museum  (Dyce  Collection),  is  thus  inscribed  : 

'  Dear  Mrs.  Thelwall, 

'I  entreat  your  acceptance  of  this  volume,  which  has  given  me  more  pleasure, 
and  done  my  heart  more  good,  than  all  the  other  books  I  ever  read,  excepting  my 
Eible.  Whether  you  approve  or  condemn  my  poetical  taste,  the  book  will  at  least 
serve  to  remind  you  of  your  unseen,  yet  not  the  less  sincere  friend, 

'  Samuel  Taylor  Coleridge. 
'  Sunday  Morning, 

'  December  the  eighteenth,  1796.' 

Bound  up  at  the  end  of  the  volume  is  a  privately-printed  pamphlet  of  si.xteen  pages, 
containing  twenty-eight '  Sonnets  from  various  Authors,' selected  by  Coleridge  'for  the 
purpose  ofbinding  them  up  with  the  Sonnets  of  the  Rev.  W.  L.  Bowles  ; '  and  prefaced 
by  some  observations  on  sonnet-writing,  which  he  put  forth  again  the  following  year 
in  the  second  edition  of  his  Poems  (1797),  by  way  of  Introduction  to  the  .Sonnets,  which 
are  there  humbly  introduced  as  '  attempted  in  the  manner  of  the  Rev.  W.  L.  Bowles.' 
For  fuller  details  of  this  very  interesting  brochure,  sse  the  excellent  edition  of  Cole- 
ridge's/'(^^'/zcrt/ ^wrf  Z'>-a;K«;'/ir  M'orks,  published  by  Pickering  in  1877  (vol.  ii.  Ap- 
pendix, pp.  375-9). 


•  Notes  363 

PAGE  , 

ON  LANDING  AT   OSTEND,   JULY  2i,   1787. 

The  orient  beam  illumes  the  parting  oar  ; 
From  yonder  azure  track,  emerging  white, 
The  earliest  sail  slow  gains  upon  the  sight, 
And  the  blue  wave  comes  rippling  to  the  shore  ; 
Meantime  far  off  the  rear  of  darkness  flies  : 
Yet  'mid  the  beauties  of  the  morn,  unmov'd, 
Like  one  for  ever  torn  from  all  he  lov'd, 
Towards  Albion's  heights  I  turn  my  longing  eyes, 
Where  every  pleasure  seem'd  erevvhile  to  dwell : 
Yet  boots  it  not  to  think  or  to  complain, 
Musing  sad  ditties  to  the  reckless  main  : — 
To  dreams  like  these,  adieu  ! — the  pealing  bell 
Speaks  of  the  hour  that  stays  not — and  the  day 
To  life's  sad  turmoil  calls  my  heart  away. 

88 — CLXXII.  From  Sonnets  a7id  Other  Poems,  6th  ed.,  1798.  Down  to 
a  late  period  of  his  long  life  {Scejies  and  Shadows  of  Days  Departed, 
&c.,  1837)  Bowles  continued  to  potter  at  the  text  of  his  sonnets, 
sometimes  for  the  better,  often  for  the  worse.  I  have  mostly  ad- 
hered to  the  earlier  readings. 

Sbomas    |liisscll 

Was  a  young  clergyman  of  remarkable  attainments,  who  died  in  1788, 
while  yet  in  his  twenty-sixth  year,  having  been  bom  at  Beaminster, 
Dorsetshire,  in  1762.  A  story  goes  that  Russell  had  a  weakness  for  tuft- 
hunting,  and  that  he  died  of  a  broken  heart  (see  The  Lounger's  Common- 
place Book,  iii,  121,  3rd  ed.,  1805,  and  Forster's  Life  of  Landor,  1869,  i, 
194) ;  but  the  anonymous  editor  of  his  remains — the  Rev.  W.  Howley,  af- 
tervi'ards  Archbishop  of  Canterbury — mentions  consumption  as  the  cause 
of  his  death,  which  took  place  at  the  Hotwells,  Bristol,  whither  he  had 
gone  for  the  restoration  of  his  health.  Bowles,  in  an  .£'/^^  written  there, 
and  inscribed  to  Howley,  recalls  Russell  sadly  as  '  the  gay  companion  of 
our  stripling  prime,'  who  had  '  sunk  unwept  into  the  tomb,'  and  says  : 

'  Hither  he  came,  a  wan  and  weary  guest, 

A  softening  balm  for  many  a  wound  to  crave  ; 
And  woo'd  the  sunshine  to  his  aching  breast, 
Which  now  seems  smiling  on  his  verdant  grave.' 

Unmerited  neglect  would  seem  to  be  the  natural  penalty  of  unmerited  or 
exaggerated  praise,  and  that  Russell  is  paying.  Southey  once  named  him 
'  the  best  English  Sonnet-writer,'  and  Bishop  Mant  in  his  edition  of 
Warton's  Poetical  tVorks  {1802,  ii,  23)  avers  that  '  there  are  no  better 
sonnets  in  the  English  language  than  Russell's  ; '  while  Landor  in  his 
Simonidea,  1806  (quoted  by  Forster — Walter  Savage  Landor  :  A  Bio- 
graphy, 1869,  ii,  8),  describes  our  second  example  as  '  a  poem  on  Phil- 
octetes  by  a  Mr.  Russell  which  would  authorise  him  to  join  the  shades  of 


364  Notes  • 

eljontHS   Russell. 

Sophocles  and  Euripides,' — praise  in  which  Wordsworth,  who  touches 
on  the  subject  in  a  letter  to  Landor  {ibid.,  p.  9),  seems  to  have  concurred. 

PAGE 

89 — CLXXiii.  This  sonnet,  the  only  one  of  Russell's  given  by  Capel 
Lofft  in  his  copious  but  inaccurate  and  ill-assorted  anthology  Zaz^nz 
(1813-1814),  may  be  taken  as  a  good  example  of  the  purely  elegiac 
type. 

CLXXiv.    '  The  whole  of  this  is  exquisite.    Nothing  can  be  more 
like  Milton'  than  the  close  of  it.  When  the  first  seats  are  taken  by 
the  great  masters  in  the  poetical  art,  we  shall  often  be  more  grati- 
fied by  those  who  are  contented  to  place  themselves  and  sing  at 
their  feet,  than  by  others  whose  only  ambition  it  is  to  have  a  chair  of 
their  own.' — H.  F.  Cary  {Notices  of  Miscellaneous  English  Poets  : 
Memoir,  &c.,  by  his  Son,  1847,  ii,  297). 
Wordsworth,  writing  to  Dyce  in  1833,  has  some  excellent  remarks 
on  sonnet-writing  which  find  an  appropriate  place  under  the  illustration 
he  adduces  {Prose  Works,  iii,  333) :   '  It  should  seem  that  the  sonnet, 
like  every  other  legitimate  composition,  ought  to  have  a  beginning,  a 
middle,  and  an  end  ;  in  other  words,  to  consist  of  three  parts,  like  the 
three  propositions  of  a  syllogism,  if  such  an  illustration  may  be  used.  But 
the  frame  of  metre  adopted  by  the  Italians  does  not  accord  with  this 
view  ;  and,  as  adhered  to  by  them,  it  seems  to  be,  if  not  arbitrary,  best 
fitted  to  a  division  of  the  sense  into  two  parts,  of  eight  and  six  lines  each. 
Milton,  however,  has  not  submitted  to  this  ;  in  the  better  half  of  his  son- 
nets the  sense  does  not  close  with  the  rhyme  at  the  eighth  line,  but  over- 
flows into  the  second  portion  of  the  metre.  Now  it  has  struck  me  that  this 
is  not  done  merely  to  gratify  the  ear  by  variety  and  freedom  of  sound,  but 
also  to  aid  in  giving  that  pervading  sense  of  intense  unity  in  which  the  ex- 
cellence of  the  sonnet  has  always  seemed  to  me  mainly  to  consist.  Instead 
of  looking  at  this  composition  as  a  piece  of  architecture,  making  a  whole 
out  of  three  parts,  I  have  been  much  in  the  habit  of  preferring  the  image 
of  an  orbicular  body, — a  sphere,  or  a  dew-drop.    All  this  will  appear  to 
you  a  little  fanciful  ;  and  I  am  well  aware  that  a  sonnet  will  often  be 
found  excellent,  where  the  beginning,  the  middle,  and  the  end  are  dis- 
tinctly marked,  and  also  where  it  is  distinctly  separated  into  t7vo  parts, 
to  which,  as  I  before  observed,  the  strict  Italian  model,  as  they  write  it, 
is  favourable.  Of  this  last  construction  of  sonnet,  Russell's  upon  "  Phil- 
octetes  "  is  a  fine  specimen  :  the  first  eight  lines  give  the  hardship  of  the 
case,  the  six  last  the  consolation,  or  the  per-co7itra.'     With  Russell's 

'  In  a  copy  of  Russell  which  has  been  preserved,  containing  MS.  marginalia  by 
Gary's  friend  and  correspondent  Anna  Seward,  the  present  sonnet  is  marked — '  A  fine 
and  truly  Miltonic  sonnet,'  and  line  6 — 'A  fine  picture.' 


Notes  365 

compare  Wordsworth's  own  sonnet  on  Philoctetes  {Poetical  Works, 
1832,  ii,  194),  beginning 

'When  Philoctetes  in  the  Lemnian  Isle,' 
in  which  the  subject  receives  characteristically  different  treatment.  I 
add  a  third  example  from  Russell  {Sonnets  and  Miscellaneous  Poems ,  by 
the  late  Thomas  Russell,  Fellow  of  New  College ;  Oxford,  17S9,  p.  10). 
It  is  one  to  which  Wordsworth  draws  Dyce's  special  attention  in  the 
same  letter,  and  of  which  he  borrowed  the  closing  lines  for  one  of  his 
lona  sonnets,  composed  or  suggested  in  1S33.  Miss  Seward  in  her 
copy  of  Russell  calls  it  '  A  sweet  sonnei:,'  and  Coleridge  seems  to  have 
regarded  it  as  constituting  its  author's  sole  title  to  the  honour  of  asso- 
ciation with  Mr.  Bowles. 

Could  then  the  Babes  from  yon  unshelter'd  cot 
Implore  thy  passing  charity  in  vain  ? 
Too  thoughtless  Youth  !  what  tho'  thy  liappier  lot 
Insult  their  life  of  poverty  and  pain  ! 
What  tho'  their  Maker  doom'd  them  thus  forlorn 
To  brook  the  mockery  of  the  taunting  throng, 
Beneath  th'  Oppressor's  iron  scourge  to  mourn. 
To  mourn,  but  not  to  murmur  at  his  wrong  ! 
Yet  when  their  last  late  evening  shall  decline, 
Their  evening  chearful,  tho'  their  day  distrest, 
A  Hope  perhaps  more  heavenly-bright  than  thine, 
A  Grace  by  thee  unsought,  and  unpossest, 
A  Faith  more  fix'd,  a  Rapture  more  divine 
Shall  gild  their  passage  to  eternal  Rest. 

ISUlliam  SSlorbsborllj. 

'  The  Sonnets  (with  the  exception  of  the  Ecclesiastical  series)  bear 
witness  more  directly  perhaps  than  any  of  Mr.'  Wordsworth's  other 
writings,  to  a  principle  which  he  has  asserted  of  poetical,  as  strongly  as 
Lord  Bacon  of  physical  philosophy— the  principle  that  the  Muse  is  to 
be  the  servant  and  interpreter  of  Nature.    Some  fact,  transaction,  ornat- 
tural  object,  gives  birth  to  almost  every  one  of  them.   He  does  not  search 
his  mind  for  subjects;  he  goes  forth  into  the  world  and  they  present  them- 
selves.   His  mind  lies  open  to  nature  with  an  ever^wakeful  susceptibility, 
and  an  impulse  from  without  will  send  it  far  into  the  regions  of  thought; 
but  it  seldom  goes  to  work  upon  itself.     It  is  not  celibate,  but 
"  wedded  to  this  goodly  universe 
In  love  and  holy  passion  " — 
of  which  union  poetry  is  the  legitimate  offspring  ;  and  it  is  owing  to 


1  '  In  the  year  1834  Wordsworth  was  naturally  so  designated.    In  this  year  of  1878 
to  write  of  ^/r.  Wordsworth  would  be  as  absurd  as  to  write  oiMr.  Milton.  —Note,  1878- 


366  Notes 

this  love  and  passion  that  the  most  ordinary  incidents  and  objects  have 
inspired  an  interest  in  the  poet,  and  that  so  soon  as  the  impassioned 
character  of  his  mind  had  made  itself  felt  and  understood,  he  was 
enabled  to  convey  the  same  interest  to  his  readers.  .  ,  .  The  Sonnets 
have  not,  like  many  of  the  other  poems,  peculiarities  of  manner  which 
whilst  they  charm  one  reader  will  repel  another;  they  are  highly-finished 
compositions  distinguished,  as  regards  the  diction,  only  by  an  aptitude 
which  can  hardly  fail  to  be  approved,  whatever  may  be  the  particular 
taste  of  the  reader  ;  and  they  are  at  the  same  time  so  varied  in  subject 
and  sentiment,  that  specimens  might  be  adduced  from  them  of  almost 
every  kind  of  serious  poetry  to  which  the  sonnet  can  lend  itself.  .  .  . 
Yet  bright  and  ornate  as  many  of  them  are,  there  is  in  them,  no  less 
than  in  his  other  poems,  an  invariable  abstinence  from  antitheses  and 
false  effects.  There  is  hardly  one  of  these  three  or  four  hundred  Son- 
nets '  which  ends  in  a  point.  Pointed  lines  will  sometimes  occur  in  the 
course  of  them,  as  thought  will  sometimes  naturally  take  a  pointed  shape 
in  the  mind  ;  but  whether  it  takes  that  shape  or  another  is  obviously 
treated  as  a  matter  of  indifference;  nothing  is  sacrificed  to  it;  and  at  the 
close  of  the  sonnet,  where  the  adventitious  effect  of  the  point  might  be 
apt  to  outshine  the  intrinsic  value  of  the  subject,  it  seems  to  have  been 
studiously  avoided.  Mr.  Wordsworth's  sonnet  never  goes  off,  as  it  were, 
with  a  clap  or  repercussion  at  the  close  ;  but  is  thrown  up  like  a  rocket, 
breaks  into  light,  and  falls  in  a  soft  shower  of  brightness.'— &>A^mrv 
Taylor.  From  two  critical  Essays  on  Wordsworth  (written  in  1834  and 
1841) :  Notes  from  Books,  1849,  as  revised  in  his  Works,  vol.  v,  1878. 

'  Wordsworth,  the  greatest  of  modem  poets,  is  perhaps  the  greatest 
of  English  sonnet  writers.  Not  only  has  he  composed  a  larger  number 
of  sonnets  than  any  other  of  our  poets  ;  he  has  also  written  more  that  are 
of  first-rate  excellence.  There  is  no  intensity  of  passion  in  Wordsworth's 
sonnets;  andhereinhediffersfrom  Shakespeare,  andfrom  Mrs.Browning, 
for  whose  sonnets  the  reader  may  feel  an  enthusiastic  admiration  that 
Wordsworth's  thoughtful  and  calm  verse  rarely  excites  ;  neither  has  he 
attained  the  "  dignified  simplicity  "  which  marks  the  sonnets  of  Milton; 
but  for  purity  of  language,  for  variety  and  strength  of  thought,  for  the 
curiosa  felicitas  of  poetical  diction,  for  the  exquisite  skill  with  which  he 
associates  the  emotions  of  the  mind  and  the  aspects  of  nature,  we  know  of 
no  sonnet  writer  who  can  take  precedence  of  Wordsworth.  In  his  larger 
poems  his  language  is  sometimes  slovenly,  and  occasionally,  as  Sir  Walter 
Scott  said,  he  chooses  to  walk  on  all-fours  ;  but  this  is  rarely  the  case  in 
the  sonnets,  and  though  he  wrote  upwards  of  four  hundred,  there  are  few, 

•  '  That  is,  those  which  had  been  published  before  \Z\T..'—Note,  1878. 


Notes  367 

save  those  on  the  Punishment  of  Death  '  and  some  of  those  called  Eccle- 
siastical (for  neither  argument  nor  dogma  find  a  fitting  place  in  verse) 
that  we  could  willingly  part  with.  Wordsworth's  belief  that  the  language 
of  the  common  people  may  be  used  as  the  language  of  poetry  was  totally 
inoperative  when  he  composed  a  sonnet.  He  wrote  at  such  times  in  the 
best  diction  he  could  command,  and  the  language  like  the  thought  is  tliat 
of  a  great  master.  The  sonnets  embrace  almost  every  theme,  except  the 
one  to  which  this  branch  of  the  poetical  art  has  been  usually  dedicated. 
Some  of  the  noblest  are  consecrated  to  liberty,  some  describe  with  incom- 
parable felicity  the  personal  feelings  of  the  writer;  some  might  be  termed 
simply  descriptive,  were  it  not  that  even  these  are  raised  above  the  rank 
of  descriptive  poetry  by  the  pure  and  lofty  imagination  of  the  poet.  The 
light  that  never  was  on  sea  or  land  pervades  the  humblest  of  these 
pieces,  and  throughout  them  there  is  inculcated  a  cheerful,  because 
divine,  philosophy.' — John  Dennis^ 

Unless  stated  otherwise,  the  text  adopted  in  these  selections  is  that 
of  the  Trustees'  edition  of  the  Poetical  Works,  six  volumes,  1857  ;  while 
the  order  obsei-ved  (except  in  the  case  of  the  four  Personal  Talk  sonnets, 
pp.  90-gi,  which  I  have  restored  to  their  original  independent  position) 
is  that  of  the  six-volumed  edition  of  1858 — an  order  partly  classificatory 
and  partly  chronological.  As  regards  sources,  it  has  been  thought  suffi- 
cient to  cite  the  author's  own  books,  and  not  the  various  periodicals, 
in  which  the  poems  first  appeared, — information  which,  when  not 
given  in  separate  notes,  is  indicated  by  italicised  figures  in  parentheses 
after  the  marginal  numerals. 

PAGE  . 

90 — CLXXV.  With  this  may  be  read  a  sonnet  by  the  author  of  Mill  and 
Carlyle,  which  I  find  hidden  away  in  an  old  number  of  Howitt'5 
People's  Journal  (July,  1846).  It  is  an  echo  such  as  Words- 
worth's lines  might  have  called  forth  from  Charles  Lamb's 

FIRESIDE. 
The  pur-pur-purring  of  my  lonely  fire 
As  of  a  creature  pleased,  for  me  this  night 
Beloved  of  gentle  thoughts,  hath  strange  delight ; 
And  as  its  voice  and  warmth  do  win  me  nigher, 
Forth  from  my  breast  is  gone  all  vain  desire — 
Which  souls  may  cherish  in  their  own  despite — 
Of  Fame,  or  meaner  Wealth,  or  Worldly  might. 
And  I  have  breath  in  humbler  air,  yet  higher. 


»  It  is  in  reference  to  these  that  Mrs.  Browning  says  truly  (Enghsh  Foets,T'&(n„ 
p.  204)  :  'We  turn  away  from  them  to  other  sonnets— to  forget  aught  in  Mr.  Words- 
worth's poetry  we  must  turn  to  his  poetry  :-and  however  the  greatest  poets  of  our 
country ,-theShakespeares,  Spensers,  Miltons.-worked  upon  high  sonnet-ground, 
not  one  opened  over  it  such  broad  and  pouring  sluices  of  various  thought,  imagery, 
and  emphatic  eloquence  as  he  has  done.' 

2  English  Sonnets:  A  Selection.,  1873,  p.  220. 


368  Notes 


PAGE 


^aiiHrn  Ktorbsbod^. 


A  world  of  Household  peace  is  in  this  sound, 
A  sound  in  many  a  home  now  haply  heard, 
Like  intermitted  warblings  of  a  bird, 
Between  the  shouts  of  happy  children  round  ; 
Let  not  in  me  so  stern  a  heart  be  found 
But  thinking  thus  it  should  be  gently  stirred. 

Patrick  Proctor  Alexander. 
Ql — CLXXVII,  13.  '  I  have  heard  him  pronounce  that  the  Tragedy  of 
Othello,  Plato's  records  of  the  last  scenes  of  the  career  of  Socrates, 
and  Izaak  Walton's  Life  of  George  Herbert,  were  in  his  opinion  the 
most  pathetic  of  human  compositions.' — Rev.  R.  P.  Graves  {Me- 
moirs of  William  Wordsworth,  by  Christopher  Wordsworth,  D.D., 
1851,  ii,  482  ;  or  Prose  Works,  1876,  iii,  468). 
90-91 — CLXXV-CLXXViii  {1807).  'Written  at  Town-End.  The  last 
line  but  two  [CLXXV]  stood  at  first,  better  and  more  characteris- 
tically, thus : 

"  By  my  half-kitchen  and  half-parlour  fire." 
My  sister  and  I  were  in  the  habit  of  having  the  tea-kettle  in  our 
little  sitting-room  ;  and  we  toasted  the  bread  ourselves,  which 
reminds  me  of  a  little  circumstance  not  unworthy  of  being  set  down 
among  these  minutiae.  Happening  both  of  us  to  be  engaged  a  few 
minutes  one  morning,  when  we  had  a  young  prig  of  a  Scotch  lawyer 
to  breakfast  with  us,  my  dear  sister,  with  her  usual  simplicity  put 
the  toasting-fork  with  a  slice  of  bread  into  the  hands  of  this  Edin- 
burgh genius.  Our  little  book-case  stood  on  one  side  of  the  fire. 
To  prevent  loss  of  time,  he  took  down  a  book,  and  fell  to  reading, 
to  the  neglect  of  the  toast,  which  was  burnt  to  a  cinder.  Many  a 
time  have  we  laughed  at  this  circumstance  and  other  cottage  sim- 
plicities of  that  day.  By  the  bye,  I  have  a  spite  at  one  of  this 
series  of  sonnets  (I  will  leave  the  reader  to  discover  which),  as 
having  been  the  means  of  nearly  putting  off  for  ever  our  acquaint- 
ance with  dear  Miss  Fenwick,  who  has  always  stigmatised  one  line 
of  it  as  vulgar,  and  worthy  only  of  having  been  composed  by  a 
country  squire.' — Pjvse  Works,  1876,  iii,  162. 
92 — CLXXIX  {1807),  13.  So  in  the  Ode  to  Duty  : 

'  Me  this  unchartered  freedom  tires  ; 
I  feel  the  weight  of  chance-desires.' 
With  Wordsworth's  verse  compare  Daniel's  prose  {A  Defence  of 
Ryme,  ed.  1603,  sm.  8vo.) :  '  And  indeede  I  have  wished  there 
were  not  that  multiplicity  of  Rymes  as  is  used  by  many  in  Sonets, 
which  yet  wee  see  in  some  so  happily  to  succeede,  and  hath  bin  so 
farre  from  hindring  their  inventions,  as  it  hath  begot  conceit  beyond 


Notes  369 

PAGE 

expectation,  and  comparable  to  the  best  inventions  of  the  world  : 
for  sure  in  an  eminent  spirite  whom  nature  hath  fitted  for  that 
mystery,  Ryme  is  no  impediment  to  his  conceile,  but  rather  gives 
him  wings  to  mount,  and  carries  him  not  out  of  his  course,  but  as 
it  were  beyonde  his  power  to  a  farre  happyer  flight.  All  excel- 
lencies beeing  solde  us  at  the  harde  price  of  labour,  it  followcs, 
where  we  bestow  most  thereof,  we  buy  the  best  successe  :  and  Ryme 
being  farre  more  laborious  than  loose  measures  (whatsoever  is  ob- 
jected) must  needes,  meeting  with  wit  and  industry,  breed  greater 
and  worthier  effects  in  our  language.  So  that  if  our  labours  have 
wrought  out  a  manumission  from  bondage,  and  that  wee  go  at 
liberty,  notwithstanding  these  ties,  we  are  no  longer  the  slaves  of 
Ryme,  but  we  make  it  a  most  excellent  instrument  to  serve  us. 
Nor  is  this  certaine  limit  observed  in  Sonnets,  any  tyrannicall 
bounding  of  the  conceit,  but  rather  a  reducing  it  in  girum,  and  a 
just  forme,  neither  too  long  for  the  shortest  project,  nor  too  short 
for  the  longest,  being  but  only  imploied  for  a  present  passion.  For 
the  body  of  our  imagination,  being  as  an  unformed  Chaos,  without 
fashion,  without  day,  if  by  the  divine  power  of  the  spirit  it  be 
wrought  into  an  Orbe  of  order  &  forme,  is  it  not  more  pleasing  to 
nature,  that  desires  a  certainty,  &  comports  not  with  that  which 
is  infinit,  to  have  these  clozes,  rather  than  not  to  know  where  to 
end,  or  how  far  to  go,  especially  seeing  our  passions  are  often  with- 
out measure  :  &  we  finde  the  best  of  the  Latines  many  times,  either 
not  concluding,  or  els  otherwise  in  the  end  then  they  began.  Be- 
sides, is  it  not  most  delightfuU  to  see  much  excellently  ordered  in 
a  smal  roome,  or  little  gallantly  disposed  and  made  to  fill  up  a 
space  of  like  capacity  in  such  sort,  that  the  one  would  not  appeare 
so  beautiful  in  a  larger  circuit,  nor  the  other  doe  well  in  a  lesse  : 
which  often  we  finde  to  be  so,  according  to  the  powers  of  nature,  in 
the  workeman.  And  these  limited  proportions,  &  rests  of  Stanzes: 
consisting  of  6,  7,  or  8  lines,  are  of  that  happines,  both  for  the 
disposition  of  the  matter,  the  apt  planting  the  sentence  where 
it  may  best  stand  to  hit  the  certaine  close  of  delight  with  the  full 
body  of  a  just  period  well  carried,  is  such  as  neither  the  Greekes 
or  Latines  ever  attained  unto.  For  their  boundlesse  running  on, 
often  so  confounds  the  Reeder,  that  having  once  lost  himself e,  must 
eyther  give  off  unsatisfied,  or  uncertainely  cast  backe  to  retrive  the 
escaped  sence,  and  to  finde  way  againe  into  his  matter.' 
92 — CLXXx(i507).  Version  of  1827 — except  1.  14.  '  Intended  more  par- 
ticularly for  the  perusal  of  those  who  have  happened  to  be  enamoured 
of  some  beautiful  place  of  retreat  in  the  Country  of  the  Lakes.' — 
Pr.  IV.,  iii,  53.  Cp.  another  of  the  itinerary  sonnets,  in  which  the 
Y 


370  Notes 

SStillmm   SStorbsfaort^. 

PAGE  . 

subject  is  treated  in  Wordsworth's  later  and  inferior  manner  (  Yar- 
row Revisited,  &c.,  1835,  p.  21)  : 

HIGHLAND  HUT. 
See  what  gay  wild  flowers  deck  this  earth-built  Cot, 
"Whose  smoke,  forth-issuing  whence  and  how  it  may, 
Shines  in  the  greeting  of  the  Sun's  first  ray 
Like  wreathes  of  vapour  without  stain  or  blot. 
The  limpid  mountain  rill  avoids  it  not ; 
And  why  shouldst  thou  ? — If  rightly  trained  and  bred, 
Humanity  is  humble, — finds  no  spot 
Which  her  Heaven-guided  feet  refuse  to  tread. 
The  walls  are  cracked,  sunk  is  the  flowery  roof, 
Undressed  the  pathway  leading  to  the  door  ; 
But  love,  as  Nature  loves,  the  lonely  poor ; 
Search  for  their  worth,  some  gentle  heart  wrong-proof, 
Meek,  patient,  kind  ;  and,  were  its  trials  fewer. 
Belike  less  happy. — Stand  no  more  aloof  !  ^ 
g3— CLXXXI  {1827).   '  This  rill  trickles  down  the  hillside  into  Winder- 
mere near  Lowood.     My  sister  and  I,  on  our  first  visit  together  to 
this  part  of  the  country,  walked  from  Kendal,  and  we  rested  to 
refresh  ourselves  by  the  side  of  the  Lake  where  the  streamlet  falls 
into  it.  This  sonnet  was  written  some  years  after  in  recollection  of 
that  happy  ramble,  that  most  happy  day  and  hour.'— /'r.  W.,  iii,  53. 
Prof.  Knight's  identification  of  this  'rill'  {English  Lake  District  as 
hiterpreted  in  the  Poems  of  Wordsworth,  1878,  p.  135)  is  corrected 
by  Dr.  Dowden  in  The  Academy,  Feb.  i,  1879  :   '  I  learn  from  the 
Rev.  R.  P.  Graves,  on  the  authority  of  either  Wordsworth  or  Mrs. 
Wordsworth,  that  the  little  rill  is  one  which  comes  down  from 
Wansfell,  and  which  may  be  found  at  the  left-hand  side  of  the 
approach  leading  to  Dovenest  from  the  road.'     L.  5.    Cp.  CXCVI, 
12.     L.  13.  Cp.  Nutting  : 

'  One  of  those  heavenly  days  that  cannot  die.' 
CLXXXii  {1815).  '  This  was  written  when  we  dwelt  in  the  Parson- 
age at  Grasmere.  The  principal  features  of  the  picture  are  Bredon 
Hill  and  Cloud  Hill,  near  Coleorton.  I  shall  never  forget  the  happy 
feeling  with  which  my  heart  was  filled  when  I  was  impelled  to  com- 
pose this  sonnet.  We  resided  only  two  years  in  this  house ;  and 
during  the  last  half  of  this  time,  which  was  after  this  poem  had  been 
written,  we  lost  our  two  children,  Thomas  and  Catherine.     Our 

'  In  a  note  on  this  sonnet,  which,  as  will  be  observed,  describes  the  exterior  of  a 
Highland  hut,  the  poet  extracts  from  the  (then)  MS.  journal  of  his  fellow-traveller  a 
fine  description  of  the  interior  of  one  of  these  dwellings,  which  will  be  found  at  pp. 
102-105  of  the  now  published  Recollections  of  a  Tour  made  in  Scotland,  A. D.  1803, 
by  Dorothy  Wordsworth.    Edin.,  1874. 


Notes  -J -J  I 


PAGE 


sorrow  upon  these  events  often  brought  it  to  my  mind,  and  cast  me 
upon  the  support  to  which  the  last  line  of  it  gives  expression : 

"  The  appropriate  calm  of  blest  eternity." 
It  is  scarcely  necessary  to  add  that  we  still  possess  the  picture.'— 
Fr.  IV.,  iii,  54.  An  earlier  reference  to  the  same  picture  and  poem 
occurs  in  a  letter  from  the  author  to  the  artist,  dated  '  August  28, 
1811,  Cottage,  7  minutes'  walk  from  the  seaside,  near  Bootle.  Cum- 
berland: ' — 'Over  the  chimney-piece  is  hung  your  little  picture,  from 
the  neighbourhood  of  Coleorton.  In  our  other  house,  on  account 
of  the  frequent  fits  of  smoke  from  the  chimneys,  both  the  pictures 
which  I  have  from  your  hand  were  confined  to  bed-rooms.  A  few 
days  after  I  had  enjoyed  the  pleasure  of  seeing,  in  different  moods 
of  mind,  your  Coleorton  landscape  from  my  fire-side,  it  suggested io 
me  the  following  sonnet,  which,  having  walked  out  to  the  side  of 
Grasmere  brook,  where  it  murmurs  through  the  meadows  near  the 
church,  I  composed  immediately.' — Id.,  ii,  159. 
94— CLXXxiv,  2-3.  In  '  Morpheus  house '  as  described  by  Spenser 
{Faerie  Queene,  i,  i,  41),  there  was  heard  '  no  other  noyse  '  than 

'  A  trickling  streame  from  high  rock  tumbling  downe. 
And  ever-drizling  raine  upon  the  loft, 
Mixt  with  a  murmuring  winde,  much  like  the  sowne 
Of  swarming  Bees.' 

The  sleep-allurements  enumerated  in  this  sonnet  are  not  all  tradi- 
tional poetical  property.  I've  (1807) :  preferable  here  to  the  '  I 
have  '  of  other  versions. 

CLXXXiii-CLXXXiv  {mOT).     See  reference  p.  254. 
95— CLXXXV  {1819). 

CLXXXVi  {1819).  '  I  could  write  a  treatise  of  lamentation  upon 
the  changes  brought  about  among  the  cottages  of  Westmoreland  by 
the  silence  of  the  spinning-wheel.  During  long  winter's  nights  and 
wet  days,  the  wheel  upon  which  wool  was  spun  gave  employment 
to  a  great  part  of  a  family.  The  old  man,  however  infirm,  was  able 
to  card  the  wool,  as  he  sate  in  the  corner  by  the  fire-side;  and  often, 
when  a  boy,  have  I  admired  the  cylinders  of  carded  wool  which 
were  softly  laid  upon  each  other  by  his  side.  Tv/o  wheels  were 
often  at  work  on  the  same  floor,  and  others  of  the  family,  chiefly  the 
little  children,  were  occupied  in  teazing  and  clearing  the  wool  to  fit 
it  for  the  hand  of  the  carder.  So  that  all,  except  the  infants,  were 
contributing  to  mutual  support.  Such  was  the  employment  that  pre- 
vailed in  the  pastoral  vales.  Where  wool  was  not  at  hand,  in  the 
small  rural  towns,  the  wheel  for  spinning  flax  was  almost  in  as  con- 
stant use,  if  knitting  was  not  preferred  ;  which  latter  occupation  had 


372 


Notes 


PAGE 

the  advantage  (in  some  cases  disadvantage)  that  not  being  of  neces- 
sity stationary,  it  allowed  of  gossiping  about  from  house^to  house, 
which  good  housewives  reckoned  an  idle  thing.' — Pr.  IV.,  iii,  55. 
In  connection  with  this  and  the  sonnet  which  follows  it  in  the  same 
series,  beginning  '  Excuse  is  needless,'  read  the  8th  and  gth  Books 
of  T/ie  Excursion,  where  the  subject  of  mechanical  labour  is  dis- 
cussed, and  the  favourable  and  unfavourable  effects  of  the  '  manu- 
facturing spirit '  set  forth. 
96 — CLXXXVii  {1815).  '  This  was  in  fact  suggested  by  my  daughter 
Catherine  long  after  her  death.' — Fr.   IV.,  iii,  56. 

CLXXXViiI  (i5C7-version  adopted).  '  This  was  coi^jposed  on  the 
beach  near  Calais,  in  the  autumn  of  1802.' — Fr.  IV.,  iii,  56,  The 
very  characteristic  sonnet  immediately  following  this  in  the  series 
may  be  given  here  {Foems,  1807,  i,  106) : 

.  Where  lies  the  Land  to  which  yon  Ship  must  go  ? 
Festively  she  puts  forth  in  trim  array, 
As  vigorous  as  a  Lark  at  break  of  day  :     • 
Is  she  for  tropic  suns,  or  polar  snow  ? 
What  boots  the  enquiry  ? — Neither  friend  nor  foe 
She  cares  for  ;  let  her  travel  where  she  may, 
She  finds  familiar  names,  a  beaten  way 
Ever  before  her,  and  a  wind  to  blow. 
Yet  still  I  ask,  what  Haven  is  her  mark  ? 
And,  almost  as  it  was  when  ships  were  rare, 
(From  time  to  time,  like  Pilgrims,  here  and  there 
Crossing  the  waters),  doubt,  and  something  dark. 
Of  the  old  Sea  some  reverential  fear. 
Is  with  me  at  thy  farewell,  joyous  Bark  !  ' 
97 — cLXXXix  {1807),  10-14.   Note  the  repeated  recollections  of  Spen- 
ser here  {Colin  Clouts  come  home  againe,  245) : 

.  .  .   '  Triton,  blowing  loud  his  wreathed  home.' 
Line  248  introduces  Proteus,  and   283  ends  with  'pleasant  lea.' 
Wordsworth's  penultimate  line  recalls  Milton  also  {Paradise  Lost, 

iii,  603) :  .  .  .   '  and  call  up  unbound 

In  various  shapes  old  Proteus  from  the  sea.' 

'  The  latter  part  of  this  sonnet  has  been  misapprehended  by  some 
persons,  who  have  supposed  that  pagan  superstitions  were  com- 
mended absolutely,  and  not  merely  as  being  better  thair  a  total 
absence  of  devotional  and  natural  sentiment.  All  that  Mr.  Words- 
worth contends  for,  is  a  preference  for  Triton  or  Proteus  to  Mam- 
mon.'— Sir  Henry  Taylor's  Notes  from  Books,  1849,  p.  154. 

'  I  may  remind  the  reader  of  the  fine  echo  which  thissonnet  evoked  from  Arthur  Hugh 
Clough  half  a  century  later,  on  the  bosom  of  the  Atlantic.    {Poems,  2nd  ed.,  1863,  p.  82.) 


Notes  373 

PAGE 

97 — CXC  {1837).  Cp.  Hartley  Coleridge,  cccxix,  p.  162, 

98 — CXCI  {1827),  7-9.  One  of  the  most  remarkable  English  poems  on 

Dante  with  which  I  am  acquainted  is  in  sonnet-form  {lo  in  Egypt, 

and  Other  Poems,  1859,  p.  58): 

Poet,  whose  unscarr'd  feet  have  trodden  Hell, 

By  what  grim  path  and  dread  environing 

Of  fire  couldst  thou  that  dauntless  footstep  bring 

And  plant  it  firm  amid  the  dolorous  cell 

Of  darkness  where  perpetually  dwell 

The  spirits  cursed  beyond  imagining  ?     • 

Or  else  is  thine  a  visionary  wing, 

And  all  thy  terror  but  a  tale  to  tell  ? 

Neither  and  both,  thou  seeker  !     I  have  been 

No  wilder  path  than  thou  thyself  dost  go, 

Close  mask'd  in  an  impenetrable  screen, 

Which  having  rent  I  gaze  around,  and  know 

What  tragic  wastes  of  gloom,  before  unseen. 

Curtain  the  soul  that  strives  and  sins  below. 

Richard  Gamett. 

A  very  interesting  echo  of  Wordsworth's  sonnet  in  like  form  occurs 
in  a  recent  volume  of  American  verse  {The  Poet  and  his  Master, 
and  Other  Poems.     New  York,  1879) : 

What  is  a  Sonnet  ?     'Tis  the  pearly  shell 

That  murmurs  of  the  far-off,  murmuring  sea  ; 

A  precious  jewel  carved  most  curiously  ; 

It  is  a  little  picture  painted  well. 

What  is  a  Sonnet  ?     'Tis  the  tear  that  fell 

From  a  great  poet's  hidden  ecstasy  ; 

A  two-edged  sword,  a  star,  a  song — ah  me  ! 

Sometimes  a  heavy  tolling  funeral  bell. 

This  was  the  flame  that  shook  with  Dante's  breath  ; 

The  solemn  organ  whereon  Milton  played, 

And  the  clear  glass  where  Shakspeare's  shadow  falls : 

A  sea  this  is — beware  who  ventureth  ! 

For  like  a  fjord  the  narrow  floor  is  laid 

Deep  as  mid  ocean  to  the  sheer  mountain  walls. 

Richard  IVatson  Gilder. 

98 — CXCII  {1816).  .  .  .  '  Many  of  Wordsworth's  so-called  sonnets  are 
not  sonnets  at  all,  according  to  the  Italian  definition  ;  but  it  must 
also  be  added,  that  whenever  he  submits  to  that  definition,  whether 
consciously  or  not,  and  has  some  respect  for  the  harmony  of  the 
form,  the  thought  becomes  more  sharply  defined  and  elaborated, 
and  the  result  is  not  only  Wordsworth's  best  sonnet,  but  an  English 
sonnet  deserving  of  the  name.  If  I  were  called  upon  to  justify 
this  statement  by  an  example,  I  should  be  disposed  to  cite  the 
sonnet  to  Haydon.  It  is  regularly  built  up  according  to  the  first 
type  [as  expressed  by  the  formula  122  i,   1221;  345,  34  5]— 


374 


Notes 


^rllinm  '^orbsborllr. 

PAGE 

the  second  quatrain  terminates  in  a  full  point,  and  the  tercets  in 
alternate  rhjine  lead  happily  to  a  noble   conclusion.' — Charles 
Tomlinson  {The  Sonnet :  its  Origin,  &c.,  1874,  p.  78). 
gg — CXCili  {1816),  9-14.     '  This  conclusion  has  more  than  once,  to  my 
great  regret,  excited  painfully  sad  feelings  in  the  hearts  of  young 
persons  fond  of  poetry  and  poetic  composition  by  contrast  of  their 
feeble  and  declining  health  with  that  state  of  robust  constitution 
which  proApted  me  to   rejoice  in  a  season  of  frost  and  snow  as 
more  favourable  to  the  Muses  than  summer  itself.' — Fr.  IV.,  iii,  58. 
cxciv  {1827).   '  Written  on  a  journey  from  Brinsop  Court,  Here- 
fordshire.'— Pr.  IV.,  iii,  59.     LI.  1-2.  The  words  quoted  are  Cow- 
per's  {The  Task,  ii,  2S5).     Compare  the  different  treatment  of  a 
li\-ing  master  of  the  sonnet  {Poems,  1870,  p.  210) : 
BROKEN  MUSIC. 
The  mother  will  not  turn,  who  thinks  she  hears 
Her  nursling's  speech  first  grow  articulate  ; 
But  breathless  with  averted  eyes  elate 
She  sits,  with  open  lips  and  open  ears, 
That  it  may  call  her  twice.     'Mid  doubts  and  fears 
Thus  oft  my  soul  has  hearkened  ;  till  the  song, 
A  central  moan  for  days,  at  length  found  tongue, 
And  the  sweet  music  welled  and  the  sweet  tears. 
But  now,  whatever  while  the  soul  is  fain 
To  list  that  wonted  murmur,  as  it  were 
The  speech-bound  sea-shell's  low  importunate  strain, — 
No  breath  of  song,  thy  voice  alone  is  there, 
O  bitterly  beloved  !  and  all  her  gain 
Is  but  the  pang  of  unpermitted  prayer. 

Dante  Gabriel  Rossetti. 

100 — cxcv  {I8I0).  .  .  .  '  Composed  on  the  roof  of  a  coach,  on  my  way 
to  France,  September,  1802.'— /"n  W.,  iii,  60.  Wordsworth  was 
on  his  way  home  from  France  in  September,  1802  :  see  succeeding 
note. 

CXCTT  {ISOT),  4-5.  Ps.  civ,  2  :  '  Thou  coverest  thyself  with  light 
as  with  a  garment.'  12.  Cf.  CLXXXI,  5,  for  a  variation  of  the 
personal  metaphor,  or  'pathetic  fallacy,'  as  Mr.  Ruskin  terms  it 
{Modern  Painters,  iii,  chap.  xii).  This  sonnet,  though  '  composed' 
on  the  return  journey  in  September,  was  doubtless  cmueived  on  the 
roof  of  the  Dover  coach,  as  the  poet  and  his  sister  were  on  their 
way  to  the  Continent.  In  a  diary  which  she  kept  on  the  journey, 
Miss  Wordsworth  thus  describes  the  scene  under  date  July  30,  1802 
{Memoirs  of  William  Wordsworth,  i,  186):—'  Left  London  between 
five  and  six  o'clock  of  the  morning  outside  the  Dover  coach.  A 
beautiful  morning.     The  city,  St.  Paul's,  with  the  river— a  multi- 


Notes  375 

PAGE 

tude  of  little  boats,  made  a  beautiful  sight  as  we  crossed  WestminsUr 
Bridge,  the  houses  not  overhung  by  their  clouds  of  smoke,  and  were 
spread  out  endlessly  ;  yet  the  sun  shone  so  brightly,  with  such  a 
pure  light,  that  there  was  something  like  the  purity  of  one  of 
Nature's  own  grand  spectacles.' 
lOi — cxcvii  {1827).  '  This  parsonage  was  the  residence  of  my  friend 
Jones,  and  is  particularly  described  in  another  note.' — Fr.  IV.,  iii, 
60.  For  the  description  see  ibid.,  136.  Henry  Reed  {Lectures, 
&c. ,  ii,  248)  remarks  the  great  merit  of  this  sonnet  as  '  a  piece  of 
landscape  description,  illuminated  with  a  verj-  rich  moral  light.' 

cxcviii  {1S37).    '  Lady  Fitzgerald  as  described  to  me  by  Lady 
Beaumont.' — Fr.  IF.,  iii,  62.     The  sonnet  maybe  paired  with  the 
next  in  the  series  {Foetical  Works,  1827,  ii,  346,  as  amended  1S32)  : 
TO  ROTH  A  QUILLINAN. 
Rotha,  my  Spiritual  Child  !  this  head  was  grey 
When  at  the  sacred  Font  for  Thee  I  stood  : 
Pledged  till  thou  reach  the  verge  of  womanhood. 
And  shalt  become  thy  own  sufficient  stay  : 
Too  late,  I  feel,  sweet  Orphan  !  was  the  day 
For  stedfast  hope  the  contract  to  fulfil ; 
Yet  shall  my  blessing  hover  o'er  thee  still, 
Embodied  in  the  music  of  this  Lay, 
Breathed  forth  beside  the  peaceful  mountain  Stream 
Whose  murmur  soothed  thy  languid  Mother's  ear 
After  her  throes,  this  Stream  of  name  more  dear 
Since  thou  dost  bear  it, — a  memorial  theme 
For  others  ;  for  thy  future  self,  a  spell 
To  summon  fancies  out  of  Time's  dark  cell.' 

102 — cxcix  {1835).  '  In  the  month  of  January  [blank],  when  Dora  and 
I  were  walking  from  Town-End,  Grasmere,  across  the  vale,  snow 
being  on  the  ground,  she  espied  in  the  thick  though  leafless  hedge 
a  bird's-nest  half  filled  with  snow.  Out  of  this  comfortless  appear- 
ance arose  this  Sonnet,  which  was,  in  fact,  Avritten  without  the  least 
reference  to  any  individual  object,  but  merely  to  prove  to  myself  that 
I  could,  if  I  thought  fit,  write  in  a  strain  that  poets  have  been  fond 
of.  On  the  14th  of  February  in  the  same  year,  my  daughter,  in  a 
sportive  mood,  sent  it  as  a  Valentine  under  a  fictitious  name  to  her 
cousin  C.  W.' — Fr.  IV.,  iii,  64.  '  Wordsworth,  who  had  to  guard 
against  a  tendency  to  be  redundant  and  discursive,  found  the  form 
convenient,  and  gathered  his  thoughts  into  sonnets,  as  a  reaper 
gathers  the  corn  into  sheaves  :  and  though  his  nature  was  vehement, 
it  was  a  governed  ardour  only  that  was  permitted  to  appear  in  his 
verse;  and  when  he  sang  of  love,  it  was  "  such  love  as  spirits  feel," — 

*  '  Rotha,  the  daughter  of  my  son-in-law  Mr.  Quillinan.'    L.  9.  '  The  river  Rotha, 
that  flows  into  Windermere  from  the  Lakes  of  Grasmere  and  Rydal.' — /V.  H'.,  iii,  62, 


PAGE 


376  Notes  ^ 

MHIiam  lEorbsborllj. 

too  impersonal  tobeimpassioned.  I  ventured  once  to  askhim  whether 
it  was  not  otherwise  in  the  case  of  the  sonnet  beginning,  "  Why  art 
thou  silent  ?  "  "  No,"  he  said,  "  merely  an  act  of  the  intellect."  ' — 
Sir  Henry  Taylor  (Essay  on  Aubrey  De  Vere's  Poems  :  Works,  v, 
1878,  p.  140).  In  an  article  on  Charles  Tennyson  Turner  in  The 
Nineteenth  a'«/z<;7  for  September,  1879,  Mr.  Spedding  adduces  this 
sonnet  in  illustration  of  his  proposition  that '  the  necessity  of  forcing 
the  thought  into  the  frame  has  spoiled  many  good  sonnets  ; '  con- 
tending that  the  last  six  lines,  which  he  believes  were  composed  first, 
are  the  essential  portion  of  the  sonnet,  and  would  be  much  better 
without  the  first  eight,  which  he  believes  '  were  put  in  after,  not 
because  the  expression  of  the  thought,  but  only  because  the  form  of 
the  sonnet,  required  them.'  Mr.  Spedding's  criticism  involves  a  con- 
tradiction of  terms— in  fact,  a  bull.  Before  a  sonnet  can  be  '  spoiled  ' 
it  must  be  a  sonnet.  A  sonnet  consists  of  fourteen  lines.  Discard 
any  one  of  the  objectionable  eight  lines,  and  where  is  the  sonnet? 

102— cc  {1838  :  The  Sonnets.  Collected  in  one  volume,  with  a  few  addi- 
tional ones,  now  first  published). 

103 — cci  {I842).  Manifestly  descriptive  of  Miss  Gillies's  portrait  of 
Dora  Wordsworth  (Mrs.  Quillinan),  of  which  an  engraving  by 
Armytage  is  prefixed  to  the  second  volume  of  the  Memoirs,  1851. 
At  page  342  of  same  volume  we  learn  that  the  next  two  sonnets  in 
the  series  refer  to  a  portrait  of  Mrs.  Wordsworth.  {Poems,  Chiefly 
of  Eaj'ly  and  Late  Years;  &c.,  1842,  pp.  227-8): 

TO  A  PAINTER. 
I. 

All  praise  the  Likeness  by  thy  skill  portrayed  ; 

But  'tis  a  fruitless  task  to  paint  for  me, 

Who,  yielding  not  to  changes  Time  has  made. 

By  the  habitual  light  of  memory  see 

Eyes  unbedimmed,  see  bloom  that  cannot  fade. 

And  smiles  that  from  their  birth-place  ne'er  shall  flee 

Into  the  land  where  ghosts  and  phantoms  be  ; 

And,  seeing  this,  own  nothing  in  its  stead. 

Couldst  thou  go  back  into  far-distant  years. 

Or  share  with  me,  fond  thought  !  that  inward  eye — 

Then,  and  then  only,  Painter  !  could  thy  Art 

The  visual  powers  of  Nature  satisfy. 

Which  hold,  whate'er  to  common  sight  appears, 

Their  sovereign  empire  in  a  faithful  heart.' 


1  'The  picture  which  gave  occasion  to  this  and  the  following  Sonnet  was  from  the 
pencil  of  Miss  M.  Gillies,  who  resided  for  several  weeks  under  our  roof  at  Rydal 
Mount.'— /'r.;r.,iii,  65.  '  Written  after  thirty-six  years  of  wedded  life,' they  testify, 
'in  the  language  of  the  heart,  that  age  does  not  impair  true  beauty.,  but  adds  new 
graces  to  it ;  in  a  word,  that  genuine  beauty  enjoys  eternal  youth.'  {Memoirs,  i,  205). 


Notes  377 

ON  THE  SAME  SUBJECT. 

2 

Though  I  beheld  at  first  with  blank  surprise  J 


This  Work,  I  now  have  gazed  on  it  so  long 
I  see  its  truth  with  unreluctant  eyes  : 

0  my  Beloved  !     I  have  done  thee  wrong, 
Conscious  of  blessedness,  but,  whence  it  sprung, 
Ever  too  heedless,  as  I  now  perceive  : 

Morn  into  noon  did  pass,  noon  into  eve,  * 

And  the  old  day  was  welcome  as  the  young, 
As  welcome,  and  as  beautiful — in  sooth 
More  beautiful,  as  being  a  thing  more  holy  : 
Thanks  to  thy  virtues,  to  the  eternal  youth 
Of  all  thy  goodness,  never  melancholy  ; 
To  thy  large  heart  and  humble  mind,  that  cast 
Into  one  vision,  future,  present,  past.' 
103— ecu  {mitS).     Dated  Dec.  24,  1842.     '  The  Hill  that  rises  to  the 

south-east,  above  Ambleside.'— /'r.  W.,  iii,  65. 
90-103 — CLXXV-ccii.  With  the  exception  of  the  four  first,  which 
belong  to  the  Poems  of  Sentiment  and  Reflection,  these  are 
from  the  Miscellaneous  Sonnets  in  Three  Parts,  of  which  I 
subjoin  two  additional  examples.  i^The.  Waggoner,  a  Poem.  To 
which  are  added,  Sonnets.     i8ig,  p.  66) : 

1  watch,  and  long  have  watch'd,  with  calm  regret 
Yon  slowly-sinking  Star, — immortal  Sire 

(So  might  he  seem)  of  all  the  glittering  quire  ! 

Blue  ether  still  surrounds  him — yet — and  yet  ; 

But  now  the  horizon's  rocky  parapet 

Is  reach'd,  where,  forfeiting  his  bright  attire. 

He  burns — transmuted  to  a  sullen  fire. 

That  droops  and  dwindles  ;  and,  the  appointed  debt 

To  the  flying  moments  paid,  is  seen  no  more. 

Angels  and  gods  !  we  struggle  with  our  fate. 

While  health,  power,  glory,  pitiably  decline, 

Depress'd,  and  then  extinguish'd  :  and  our  state 

In  this  how  different,  lost  Star,  from  thine. 

That  no  to-morrow  shall  our  beams  restore  1  * 

1  'The  tender  Palinodia  is  beyond  Petrarch.  .  .  .  That  "  more  beautiful"  is  most 
beautiful  :  all  human  love's  cunning  is  in  it.  besides  the  full  glorifying  smile  of  Chris- 
tian love.' — Mrs.  Browning  {^The  Greek  Christian  Poets,  and  the  English  Poets, 
1863,  p.  205). 

*  '  Suggested  in  front  of  Rydal  Mount,  the  rocky  parapet  being  the  summit  of 
Loughrigg  Fell  opposite.  Not  once  only  but  a  hundred  times  have  the  feelings  of 
this  sonnet  been  awakened  by  the  same  objects  from  the  same  place.' — Pr.  W.,  iii, 
57.  Few  poets  have  expressed  the  closing  sentiment  with  the  simplicity  and  pathos 
of  Drummond  (Poems,  1616,  sig.  H)  : 

'  Woods  cut  againe  doe  grow, 
Budde  doth  the  Rose  and  Dazie,  Winter  done. 
But  wee  once  dead  no  more  doe  see  the  Sunne.' 

Cp.  Daniel  also,  as  in  the  '  Pastorall '  already  quoted  {ante,  p.  327)  : 
'  the  sun  doth  set.  and  rise  againe. 
But  when  as  our  short  light 
Comes  once  to  set,  it  makes  eternall  night.' 


378  Notes 

PAGE 

{Ibid.,  p.  62,  as  amended  1827) : 

TO  A  SNOW-DROP. 

Lone  Flower,  hemmed  in  with  snows  and  white  as  they, 

But  hardier  far,  once  more  I  see  thee  bend 

Thy  forehead,  as  if  fearful  to  offend. 

Like  an  unbidden  guest.     Though  day  by  day, 

Storms,  sallying  from  the  mountain-tops,  waylay 

The  rising  sun,  and  on  the  plains  descend  ; 

Yet  art  thou  welcome,  welcome  as  a  friend 

Whose  zeal  outruns  his  promise  !     Blue-eyed  May 

Shall  soon  behold  this  border  thickly  set 

With  bright  jonquils,  their  odours  lavishing 

On  the  soft  west-wind  and  his  frolic  peers  ; 

Nor  will  I  then  thy  modest  grace  forget. 

Chaste  Snow-drop,  venturous  harbinger  of  Spring, 

And  pensive  monitor  of  fleeting  years  ! 

104 — can  {1807).  From  Memorials  of  a  Tour  in  Scotland,  1803. 
'  The  castle  here  mentioned  was  Nidpath,  near  Peebles.  The  per- 
son alluded  to  was  the  then  Duke  of  Queensberry.  The  fact  was 
toldmeby  Walter  Scott." — Pr.  ^F.,  iii,  68.  The  circumstances  in 
which  the  sonnet  was  written  are  related,  and  its  scene  described,  in 
Dorothy  Wordsworth's  Recollections  of  a  Tour  made  iti  Scotland, 
A.D.  1803.  Edin.,  1S74,  pp.  248-9.  It  was  a  great  favourite  with 
Sir  Walter, — 'Few  lines  in  the  language,' says  Lockhart,  'were 
more  frequently  in  his  mouth.'  Nor  can  it  indeed  be  much  other- 
wise with  anyone  of  keen  sympathies  and  true  simplicity  of  heart ; 
while,  on  the  other  hand,  persons  of  coarser  sensibilities  will  hardly 
understand  the  degree  of  emotion  displayed, — will  at  least  consider 
it  greatly  out  of  proportion  to  the  exciting  cause.  Not  so  grand  old 
Michael  Drayton,  that  true-lover  of  Nature,  under  like  provocation 
{Poly-Olbion,  1613,  p.  107.     The  Seaventh  Song) : 

'  our  Trees  so  hackt  above  the  ground. 
That  where  their  lof  tie  tops  their  neighboring  Countries  crown'd, 
Their  Trunkes  (like  aged  folkes)  now  bare  and  naked  stand. 
As  for  revenge  to  heaven  each  held  a  withered  hand.' 

Nor  Charles  Tennyson  in  our  own  day  {Small  Tableaux,  1868,  p.  78). 
CCIV.  Miss  Wordsworth's  diary,  quoted  under  CXCVI  (pp.  374-5), 
continues  {Memoirs,  i,  187):  'Arrived  at  Calais  at  four  in  the  morning 
of  July  31st.  Delightful  walks  in  the  evenings  :  seeing  far  off  in  the 
west  the  coast  of  England,  like  a  cloud,  crested  with  Dover  Castle, 
the  evening  star,  and  the  glory  of  the  sky:  the  reflections  in  the  water 


1  For  particulars  of  '  Old  Q.,'  as  he  was  called,  and  his  acts  of  spoliation,  see  W. 
Chambers's  History  0/ Peeblesshire,  1864,  p.  323. 


Notes  ^yg 

PAGE 

were  more  beautiful  than  the  sky  itself  ;  purple  waves  brighter  than 
precious  stones  for  ever  melting  away  upon  the  sands.' 
105— CCV.   Title  :  i.e.,  by  the  French  and  the  Emperor  Francis,  in  1797. 
Buonaparte  annexed  Venice  to  the  crown  of  Italy  in  1S05.     L.  9. 
had :  query,  has? 

ccvi.   'Among  the  noblest  of  Wordsworth's  sonnets.' — IV.  S. 
Landor.     LI.  2-4.   Up  till  1827  these  lines  stood  (1807) : 

'  Whether  the  rural  Milk-maid  by  her  Cow 
Sing  in  thy  hearing,  or  thou  liest  now 
Alone  in  some  deep  dungeon's  earless  den  ; ' 
and  (181 5)  : 

'  Whether  the  all-cheering  sun  be  free  to  shed 
His  beams  around  thee,  or  thou  rest  thy  head 
Pillowed  in  some  dark  dungeon's  noisome  den.' 

The  restoration  of  the  original  epithet  earless  for  '  noisome '  in  1.  4 
was  an  undoubted  improvement ;  but  it  may  be  questioned  whether 
conformity  to  the  Italian  law  was  not  somewhat  dearly  purchased 
for  IL  2-3  at  the  cost  of  the  more  obvious  antithesis  of  the  1815  lec- 
tion. As  Coleridge  shrewdly  urged  in  justification  of  his  own  prac- 
tice {Poems,  2nd  ed.,  1797.  Page  73,  Introduction  to  the  Sonnets) : 
'  A  sameness  in  the  final  sound  of  its  words  is  the  great  and  grievous 
defect  of  the  Italian  language.  That  rule  therefore,  which  the 
Italians  have  established,  of  exactly  four  different  sounds  in  the 
Sonnet,  seems  to  have  arisen  from  their  wish  to  have  as  many,  not 
from  any  dread  of  finding  more.  But  surely  it  is  ridiculous  to  make 
the  defect  of  a  foreign  language  a  reason  for  our  not  availing  our- 
selves of  one  of  the  marked  excellences  of  our  own.'  L.  14.  Gray 
has  '  Th'  unconquerable  Mind '  {Progress  of  Poesy,  ii,  2,  65).  The 
deliverer  of  Hayti  died  in  a  French  prison  in  1803.  For  Words- 
worth's note  on  this  and  another  sonnet,  see  Pr.  W.,  iii,  71. 
106 — ccvii.  This  was  written  on  the  return  of  Wordsworth  and  his 
sister  from  France,  and  may  be  referred  to  the  occasion  noted  in  the 
journal  of  the  latter  under  29th  August,  [1802],  {Memoirs,  i,  187): 
'  Left  Calais  at  twelve  in  the  morning  for  Dover  .  .  .  bathed,  and 
sat  on  the  Dover  cliffs,  and  looked  upon  France  :  we  could  see  the 
shores  almost  as  plain  as  if  it  were  but  an  English  lake.  .  .  .  Stayed 
in  London  till  22d  September.' 

CCVIII.  In  allusion  to  the  usurpation  of  Switzerland  by  the  French, 
under  Buonaparte  in  1800.  '  This  was  composed  while  pacing  to 
and  fro  between  the  Hall  of  Coleorton,  then  rebuilding,  and  the 
principal  Farm-house  of  the  Estate,  in  which  we  lived  for  nine  or 
ten  months.' — Pr.  W.,  iii,  71.     The  opening  recalls  Byron's 


380  Notes 

PAGE 

'  The  mountains  look  on  Marathon, 
And  Marathon  looks  on  the  sea  ; 

and  Tennyson's 

'  Of  old  sat  Freedom  on  the  heights, 
The  thunders  breaking  at  her  feet : 
Above  her  shook  the  starry  lights  : 
She  heard  the  torrents  meet  ; ' 

while  the  personification  of  liberty  as  a  maid  of  the  mountains  was 

no  doubt  a  recollection  of  the  line  in  Milton's  L! Allegro  : 

'  The  mountain-nymph,  sweet  Liberty.' 

It  is  the  glory  of  mountains  that  they  have  been  in  all  ages  the 

asylums  and  strongholds  of  the  resisters  of  tyranny  and  oppression  ; 

that  on  them,  to  use  Laman  Blanchard's  fine  metaphor, 

'  have  mortal  footsteps  found  , 
The  eagle-nest  of  Freedom.' 

But  the  poet's  apprehensions  for  the  mountain-maid  were  veritably 
those  of  '  a  lover  or  a  child  '  (ccxii,  p.   108).    Not  'till  a'  the  seas . 
gang  dry'  shall  her  ear  be  'bereft'  of  the  'deep  bliss'  of  the  mountain- 
voice.  Listen,  for  example,  to  a  recent  '  soul-animating '  sonnet  by 
the  present  wearer  of  England's  bays, — 'greener  from  the  brows 
Of  him  that  utter'd  nothing  base  ' — which  seems  to  carry  an  echo 
of  this  very  sonnet,  as  well  as  of  Milton's  mighty  imprecation. 
{The  Nhieteenth  Century,  May,  1877): — 
MONTENEGRO. 
They  rose  to  where  their  sovran  eagle  sails. 
They  kept  their  faith,  their  freedom,  on  the  height, 
Chaste,  frugal,  savage,  arm'd  by  day  and  night 
Against  the  Turk  ;  whose  inroad  nowhere  scales 
Their  headlong  passes,  but  his  footstep  fails. 
And  red  with  blood  the  Crescent  reels  from  fight 
Before  their  dauntless  hundreds,  in  prone  flight 
By  thousands  down  the  crags  and  thro'  the  vales. 
O  smallest  among  peoples  !  rough  rock-throne 
Of  Freedom  !  warriors  beating  back  the  swarm 
Of  Turkish  Islam  for  five  hundred  years. 
Great  Tsernogora!  never  since  thine  own 
Black  ridges  drew  the  cloud  and  brake  the  storm 
Has  breathed  a  race  of  mightier  mountaineers. 

Alfred  Tennyson. 

107 — CCIX.  '  This  was  written  immediately  after  my  return  from  France 
to  London,  when  I  could  not  but  be  struck,  aS  here  described,  with 
the  vanity  and  parade  of  our  own  country,  especially  in  great  towns 
and  cities,  as  contrasted  with  the  quiet,  and  I  may  say  the  desolation, 
that  the  Revolution  had  produced  in  France.  This  must  be  borne  in 


Notes  381 

PAGE 

mind,  or  else  the  reader  may  think  that  in  this  and  succeeding  son- 
nets I  have  exaggerated  the  mischief  engendered  and  fostered  among 
us  by  undisturbed  wealth.' — /*;-.  W.,  iii,  72.  In  connection  with  it 
and  CLXXXIX  should  be  read  (but  not  without  ccxil)  other  sonnets 
of  Wordsworth's  expressing  similar  sentiments,  particularly  the  fol- 
lowing, in  which  sudden  and  precarious  riches  are  denounced  for 
the  fears  which  they  generate  ;  the  immediate  occasion  of  the  poet's 
.  rebuke  being  the  very  different  spirit  in  which,  as  he  believed,  the 
impending  conflict  with  Buonaparte  was  contemplated  by  the  dif- 
ferent classes  in  this  country.     {Poems,  1807,  i,  146) : 

OCTOBER,   18.03. 
These  times  touch  money'd  Worldlings  with  dismay  : 

Even  rich  men,  brave  by  nature,  taint  the  air  1 

With  words  of  apprehension  and  despair  :  1 

Wliile  tens  of  thousands,  thinking  on  the  affray,  ' 

Men  unto  whom  sufficient  for  the  day  \ 

And  minds  not  stinted  or  untill'd  are  given,  , 
Sound,  healthy  Children  of  the  God  of  Heaven,                                        '      > 

.  Are  cheerful  as  the  rising  Sun  in  May.  \ 

What  do  we  gather  hence  but  firmer  faith  i 

That  every  gift  of  noble  origin  i 

Is  breathed  upon  by  Hope's  perpetual  breath  ;  1 
That  virtue  and  the  faculties  within 
Are  vital, — and  that  riches  are  akin 
To  fear,  to  change,  to  cowardice,  and  death  ! 

107 — CCX,  9.  In  one  of  his  copies  of  Wordsworth  Dyce  has  noted  a 
couplet  from  Cowley  under  this  passage  {Clad  all  in  White  :  The* 

Mistress) :         <  xhy  soul,  which  does  itself  display 
Like  a  star  plac'd  i'  th'  Milky  Way.' 

The  subject  of  Milton  is  thus  worthily  treated  in  sonnet-form  by  a  -j 

young  living  poet  {Poems,  1877,  p.  11^)  : 

MIL  TON.  I 

He  left  the  upland  lawns  and  serene  air  1 

Wherefrom  his  soul  her  noble  nurture  drew,  ' 

And  reared  his  helm  among  the  unquiet  crew 
Battling  beneath  ;  the  morning  radiance  rare 
Of  his  young  brow  amid  the  tumult  there 
Grew  grim  with  sulphurous  dust  and  sanguine  dew  ; 

Yet  through  all  soilure  they  who  marked  him  knew  I 

The  signs  of  his  life's  dayspring,  calm  and  fair.  j 

But  when  peace  came,  peace  fouler  far  than  war,  j 

And  mirth  more  dissonant  than  battle's  tone,  j 

He,  with  a  scornful  sigh  of  his  clear  soul,  j 

Back  to  his  mountain  clomb,  now  bleak  and  frore,  ! 

And  with  the  awful  Night  he  dwelt  alone,  •' 

In  darkness,  listening  to  the  thunder's  roll. 

Ernest  Myers. 


382  Notes 


PAGE 


108— CCXI,  5-6.     Prior  to  1827  these  lines  read  : 

'  Road  by  which  all  might  come  and  go  that  would, 
And  bear  out  freights  of  worth  to  foreign  lands.' 

CCXli,  2-4.  Cp.  Goldsmith  ( 7>aw//^r,  91-2): 

'  contentment  fails 
And  honour  sinks  where  commerce  long  prevails.' 

See  reference  under  ccix. 
109— ccxill,  13-14-  '"  Danger  which  they  fear,  and  honour  which  they 
understand  not." — Words  in  Lord  Brooke's  Life  of  Sir  Philip 
Sidney.'— /'r.  ^.,  iii,  72.  In  pleasing  contrast  with  these  anxious 
forebodings  is  the  sonnet '  composed  by  the  side  of  Grasmere  Lake  : 
1807.'     {The  Waggoner,  &c.,  1819,  p.  68)  : 

Eve's  lingering  clouds  extend  in  solid  bars 

Through  the  grey  west  ;  and  lo  !  these  waters,  steeled 

By  breezeless  air  to  smoothest  polish,  yield 

A  vivid  repetition  of  the  stars  ; 

Jove,  Venus,  and  the  ruddy  crest  of  Mars, 

Amid  his  fellows,  beauteously  revealed 

At  happy  distance  from  earth's  groaning  field, 

Where  ruthless  mortals  wage  incessant  wars. 

Is  it  a  mirror? — or  the  nether  sphere 

Opening  its  vast  abyss,  while  fancy  feeds 

On  the  rich  show  ! — But  list  !  a  voice  is  near  ; 

Great  Pan  himself  low-whispering  through  the  reeds, 

'  Be  thankful,  thou  ;  for,  if  unholy  deeds 

Ravage  the  world,  tranquillity  is  here  ! ' 

The  following  two  sonnets  will  complete  our  selection  from  this 
series.  The  first  possesses  a  special  interest,  since  it  marks  the 
commencement  of  Wordsworth's  sonnet-writing,  thus  recorded  in 
the  Fenwick  MSS.  {Pr.  IV.,  iii,  52)  :— 'In  the  cottage  of  Town- 
End,  [Grasmere],  one  afternoon  in  1801,  my  sister  read  to  me  the 
sonnets  of  Milton.'  I  had  long  been  well  acquainted  with  them, 
but  I  was  particularly  struck  on  fliat  occasion  with  the  dignified 
simplicity  and  majestic  harmony  that  runs  through  most  of  them — in 
character  so  totally  different  from  the  Italian,  and  still  more  so  from 
,  Shakespeare's  fine  sonnets.  I  took  fire,  if  I  may  be  allowed  to  say 
so,  and  produced  three  sonnets  the  same  afternoon — the  first  I  ever 
wrote,  except  an  irregular  one  at  school  [Qu.,  that  beginning  '  Calm 
is  all  nature  as  a  resting  wheel  ?  '].  Of  these  three,  the  only  one  I  dis- 
tinctly remember  is  "  I  grieved  for  Buonaparte,"  &c.  One  was  never 

'  '  My  admiration  of  some  of  the  Sonnets  of  Milton  first  tempted  me  to  write  in  that 
form.  The  fact  is  not  mentioned  from  a  notion  that  it  will  be  deemed  of  any  importance 
by  the  reader,  but  merely  as  a  public  acknowledgment  of  one  of  the  numerous  obli- 
gations which,  as  a  Poet  and  a  Man,  I  am  under  to  our  great  fellow-countryman.' — 
Advertisement  to  the  collected  edition  o/the  Sonnets,  1838. 


Notes  383 


PAGE 


written  down  ;  the  third,  which  was  I  believe  preserved,  I  cannot 
particularise.'    (Poems,  1S07,  i,  130,  as  amended  ined.  of  1836-7): 

ISOl. 
I  grieved  for  Buonaparte,  with  a  vain 
And  an  unthinking  grief  !     The  tenderest  mood 
Of  that  Man's  mind — what  can  it  be?  what  food 
Fed  his  first  hopes  ?  what  knowledge  could  he  gain  ? 
'Tis  not  in  battles  that  from  youth  we  train 
The  Governor  who  must  be  wise  and  good, 
And  temper  with  the  sternness  of  the  brain 
Thoughts  motherly,  and  meek  as  womanhood. 
Wisdom  doth  live  with  children  round  her  knees  : 
Books,  leisure,  perfect  freedom,  and  the  talk 
Man  holds  with  week-day  man  in  the  hourly  walk 
Of  the  mind's  business  :  these  are  the  degrees 
By  which  true  Sway  doth  mount  ;  this  is  the  stalk 
True  Power  doth  grow  on  ;  and  her  rights  are  these. 

The  second,  later  by  ten  years,  should  be  compared  with  the  last 
part  of  the  sonnet  which  begins,  '  What  if  our  numbers.'  The  prin- 
ciple asserted  in  them — the  superiority  of  moral  to  merely  physical 
might — had  been  again  and  again  enforced  with  great  eloquence 
and  power  in  the  author's  prose  tract  occasioned  by  the  so-called 
Convention  of  Cintra  (see  Pr.  W.,  i,  45,  49,  63,  136,  and  146), 
published  in  May,  1809,  and  characterized  in  another  sonnet  as 
'  the  impassioned  strain 
Which,  without  aid  of  numbers,  I  sustain.' 

(Poems,  1815,  ii,  256,  as  amended  1827)  : 

1811. 
The  power  of  Armies  is  a  visible  thing, 
Formal,  and  circumscribed  in  time  and  space  ; 
But  who  the  limits  of  that  power  shall  trace 
Which  a  brave  People  into  light  can  bring 
Or  hide,  at  will, — for  Freedom  combating. 
By  just  revenge  inflamed?     No  foot  may  chase, 
No  eye  can  follow,  to  a  fatal  place 
That  power,  that  spirit,  whether  on  the  wing 
Like  the  strong  wind,  or  sleeping  like  the  wind 
Within  its  awful  caves. — From  year  to  year 
Springs  this  indigenous  produce  far  and  near ; 
No  craft  this  subtle  element  can  bind, 
Rising  like  water  from  the  soil,  to  find 
In  every  nook  a  lip  that  it  may  cheer. 
109— CCXV  {1815).   Frederick  Schill,  the  German  patriot,  fell  at  Stral- 

sund  in  l8og. 
104-109— cciv-ccxiv.  These,  of  which  all  except  the  last  one  were 

published  in  1807,  belong  to  the  Poems  Dedicated  to  National 

Independence  and  Liberty,  in  Two  Parts. 


384  Notes 

I'AGE 

iio— CCXV,  12-14.  Cp.  Shakspeare,  Lli,  3-4,  This  sonnet,  from  the 
Memorials  of  a  Tour  on  the  Continent,  1820,  will  serve  to 
exemplify  a  special  feature  of  Wordsworth's  verse  :  his  frequent 
notices  and  expositions  of  the  aerial  pageantry  of 

'  Cloudland,  gorgeous  land  ! ' — 
a  domain  of  Poetry  which  he  has  nearly  all  to  himself,  if  indeed  he 
did  not  actually  discover  it.  (See  De  Quincey's  Works,  1862,  v, 
pp.  262-5).  Another  in  the  series  contains  some  masterly  land- 
scape-painting {Memorials  of  a  Tour  on  the  Continent,  1820. 
Lond.     1822,  p.  5) : 

SCENERY  BETWEEN  NAMUR  AND  LIEGE. 
What  lovelier  home  could  gentle  Fancy  chuse  ? 
Is  this  the  Stream,  whose  cities,  heights,  and  plains, 
War's  favorite  playground,  are  with  crimson  stains 
Familiar,  as  the  Morn  with  pearly  dews  ? 
The  Morn,  that  now,  along  the  silver  Meuse, 
Spreading  her  peaceful  ensigns,  calls  the  Swains 
To  tend  their  silent  boats  and  ringing  wains. 
Or  strip  the  bough  whose  mellow  fruit  bestrews 
The  ripening  com  beneath  it.     As  mine  eyes 
Turn  from  the  fortified  and  threatening  hill, 
How  sweet  the  prospect  of  yon  watery  glade. 
With  its  grey  rocks  clustering  in  pensive  shade, 
That,  shaped  like  old  monastic  turrets,  rise 
From  the  smooth  meadow-ground,  serene  and  still ! ' 

ccxvi  {,181^2).  From  Memorials  of  a  Tour  in  Italy,  1837. 

Ill — ccxvii.  '  The  River  Duddon  rises  upon  Wrynose  Fell,  on  the  con- 
fines of  Westmoreland,  Cumberland,  and  Lancashire  :  and,  having 
served  as  a  boundary  to  the  two  last  counties  for  the  space  of  about 
twenty-five  miles,  enters  the  Irish  Sea,  between  the  Isle  of  Walney 
and  the  Lordship  of  Milium.'— /'r.  W.,  iii,  97.  See  the  same 
volume  (pp.  97-101)  for  Wordsworth's  general  remarks  on  the  series, 
and  notices  of  his  visits  to  the  stream.  L.  11.  '  The  deer  alluded 
to  is  the  Leigh,  a  gigantic  species  long  since  extinct.' — W. 

112 — ccxx.  '  How  simple  and  yet  how  full  is  the  diction  of  this  sonnet ! 
How  much  of  the  wildness  and  insecurity  of  savage  life  is  in  those 
words  "roved  or  fled,"  and  in  the  presentation  to  the  fancy  of  the 
one  sole  man  wandering  or  fugitive  !  Then  the  darkness  and  cruelty 
of  Druidical  superstition  and  barbarian  warfare  are  alluded  to  in  a 

>  For  Wordsworth's  note  on  this  sonnet,  see  Pr.  W.,  iii,  77.  Sir  Henry  Taylor 
remarks  ;  '  This  seems  pure  description  ;  yet  what  a  serious  satire  is  expressed  in  one 
word,  "  War's  iiLvawcxte. playground !  "  '  So  in  other  sonnets  :  '  the  game  which  fac- 
tion breeds,'  and  '  practised  in  V^slt'^  gaiiic.^ 


Notes 


385 


tone  of  almost  fearful  inquiry  ;  and  after  the  pause  of  silence  in 
the  ninth  line,  how  beautifully  and  with  what  an  expressive  change 
of  the  music  is  the  mind  turned  to  the  perennial  influences  of 
Nature,  as  healing,  soothing,  and  restorative  in  all  times,  whatever 
be  the  condition  of  Man  !  This  sonnet  is  a  study  in  versification 
throughout ;  and  observe  especially  the  use  of  duplicate,  tripli- 
cate, and  even  quadruplicate  consonants  in  our  language, — how 
admirably  they  may  be  made  to  serve  the  purposes  of  rhythmical 
melody  which  they  are  often  supposed  to  thwart — 

"  And  thou,  blue  streamlet,  murmuring  y'l&ld'st  no  more,"  &c. 
How  the  slight  check,  delay,  and  resistance  of  the  fourfold  conso- 
nant makes  the  flow  of  the  verse  to  be-still  more  musically  felt ! ' — 
Sir  Henry  Taylor, 
113 — CCXXI  {1S07). 

CCXXII,  I.   Not  merely  the  portion  marked,  but  this  entire  line, 
one  of  Wordsworth's  borrowings  from  Samuel  Daniel  {Musophilus, 
p.  gi,  ed.  1623).     The  whole  apostrophe  is  worth  quoting : 
*  Sacred  Religion,  mother  of  Forme  and  Feare, 

How  gorgeously  sometimes  dost  thou  sit  deckt  ? 

What  pompous  vestures  doe  we  make  thee  weare  ? 

What  stately  piles  we  prodigall  erect  ? 

How  sweet  perfum'd  thou  art,  how  shining  cleare  ? 

How  solemnely  observ'd,  with  what  respect  ? 
Another  time,  all  plaine,  all  quite  thread-bare. 

Thou  must  have  all  within,  and  nought  without, 

Sit  poorely  without  light,  disrob'd,  no  care 

Of  outward  grace,  to  amuze  the  poore  devout, 

Powrelesse,  unfollowed,  scarcely  men  can  spare 

The  necessary  rites  to  set  thee  out.' 

Another  instance  of  Wordsworth's  indebtedness  to  Daniel,  of 
which,  so  far  as  I  am  aware,  the  source  has  not  hitherto  been  traced, 
occurs  in  the  sonnet  entitled  Saxon  Gjw^m^j/ (Ecclesiastical  Sonnets, 
Pt.  I.  xi),  where  11.  9-14  are  a  recollection  of  a  passage  in  his  His- 
totie  of  England  {1612,  Y>.  2^).  lo.  The  Reverend  Robert  Walker, 
the  '  Pastor '  of  The  Excursion  (Book  vii),  buried  in  Seathwaite 
churchyard,  of  whom  see  an  extended  memoir  by  Wordsworth 
among  the  Notes  to  the  Poems ;  or,  Pr.  W.,  iii,  105. 
114— CCXXIII,  8-9.  Cp.  Shakspeare,  Lii,  7-8,  and  LXXI,  4-7.  L.  14. 
'  "  And  feel  that  I  am  happier  than  I  know." 

Milton  [Paradise  Lost,  viii,  2S2]. 

The  allusion  to  the  Greek  Poet  will  be  obvious  to  the  classical 
reader.' — Pr.   W.,  iii,  120.' 

*  Much  fruitless  labour  has  been  expended  in  the  endeavour  to  identify  the  'ob- 
vious allusion.'  One  correspondent  suggests  a  passage  in  the  Protagoras  of  Plato 
(Cap.  x.\.\viii,  P.  358,  c),  of  which  the  sense  is,  '  But  a  man's  inferiority  to  himself  is 


386  Notes 

Page 

111-114— ccxvii-ccxxiii.  From  The  River  Duddon.  a  series  of 
SONNETS.  ( The  River  Duddon,  A  Series  of  Sonnets  :  Vaudracour 
and  Julia:  and  Other  Poems.  To  -which  is  anjiexed,  A  Topo- 
graphical Description  of  the  Country  of  the  Lakes,  in  the  N^orth  of 
England.      1820). 

ccxxiv.  During  a  visit  by  Wordsworth  and  his  daughter  to 
Abbotsford  in  the  autumn  of  1 831,  Sir  Walter  accompanied  them 
and  his  other  guests  to  Newark  Castle,  on  the  Yarrow.  '  On  our 
return  in  the  afternoon,  we  had  to  cross  the  Tweed,  directly  oppo- 
site Abbotsford.  The  wheels  of  our  carriage  grated  upon  the  peb- 
bles in  the  bed  of  the  stream,  that  there  flows  somewhat  rapidly.  A 
rich,  but  sad  light,  of  rather  a  purple  than  a  golden  hue,  was  spread 
over  the  Eildon  Hills  at  that  moment;  and, thinking  it  probable  that 
it  might  be  the  last  time  Sir  Walter  would  cross  the  stream,  I  was 
not  a  little  moved,  and  expressed  some  of  my  feelings  in  the  sonnet 
beginning,  <<  a  trouble,  not  of  clouds,"  &c.'— 

Pr.    W.,  iii,  140. 

115 — ccxxv,  g.  A  list  of  errata  issued  with  the  first  edition  has  this  cor- 
rection :  '  For  "  Guest  "  read  "  quest  ;  "  '  but  the  printers  only  suc- 
ceeded in  changing  it  to  '  guest '  in  the  second  edition  which  was 
set-up  afresh  in  the  following  year  (1836).  Mr.  Arnold  has  fallen  into 
this  trap  in  his  recent  exquisite  little  volume  {Poems  of  Wordsworth. 
Chosen  and  Edited  by  Mattheiu  Arnold.  1879).  The  correction  was 
ultimately  effected  in  the  edition  of  1836-7.  11.  '  How  skilfully 
does  that  suggestion  in  the  parenthesis,  of  the  sunshiny  colouring  of 
the  aspen  in  October,  adumbrate  the  cheerfulness  to  be  bestowed 
by  natural  piety  upon  the  decline  of  life  !  preparing  for  the  princi- 
pal illustration  of  the  same  idea  in  the  song  of  the  redbreast,  which 
only  begins  to  sing  when  other  birds  have  ceased.' — Sir  Henry 
Taylor.  Perhaps  old  George  Chapman's  description  {Tears  of 
Peace)  is  the  most  felicitous  in  all  English  poetry  of  the  bird 

'  that  loves  humans  best, 
That  hath  the  bugle  eyes  and  rosy  breast, 
And  is  the  yellow  autumn's  nightingale.' 

'  Compare  with  this  Sonnet  the  poem  composed  about  thirty  years 

simply  ignorance,  as  his  superiority  to  himself  is  knowledge.''    Cp.  Mr.  Emerson's 
poem  'The  Problem'  \Poeitts.  Boston,  1865.  p.  18)  : 

'  The  hand  that  rounded  Peter's  dome, 

And  groined  the  aisles  of  Christian  Rome, 

Wrought  in  a  sad  sincerity  ; 

Himself  from  God  he  could  not  free  ; 

He  builded  better  than  he  knew  ; 

The  conscious  stone  to  beauty  grew.' 


Notes  387 

PAGE 

earlier  on  nearly  the  same  spot  of  ground,  "  What!  you  are  stepping 
westward  ?  "  This  earlier  poem,  one  of  the  most  truly  etherial  and 
ideal  Wordsworth  ever  wrote,  is  filled  with  the  overflowing  spirit 
of  life  and  hope.  In  every  line  of  it  we  feel  the  exulting  pulse  of  the 
"  traveller  through  the  world  that  lay 
Before  him  on  his  endless  way." 

The  later  one  is  stilled  down  to  perfect  autumnal  quiet.    There  is 
in  it  the  chastened  pensiveness  of  one  to  whom  all  things  now 
"  do  take  a  sober  colouring  from  an  eye 
That  hath  kept  watch  o'er  man's  mortality." 

But  the  sadness  has  at  the  heart  of  it  peaceful  hope.  This  is 
Wordsworth's  own  comment : — "As  recorded  in  my  Sister's  Jour- 
nal, I  had  first  seen  the  Trossachs  in  her  and  Coleridge's  company. 
The  sentiment  that  runs  through  this  sonnet  was  natural  to  the 
season  in  which  I  again  visited  this  beautiful  spot ;  but  this,  and 
some  other  sonnets  that  follow,  were  coloured  by  the  remembrance 
of  my  recent  visit  to  Sir  Walter  Scott,  and  the  melancholy  errand 
on  which  he  was  going."'  \Pr.  W.,  iii,  142] — Principal  Shairp 
(Appendix  to  Dorothy  Wordsworth's  Recollections  of  a  Tour  in 
Scotland,  A.D.  1S03.  Edin.  1874).  A  most  interesting  contrast 
may  also  be  suggested  between  Wordsworth's  and  a  very  powerful 
sonnet  by  a  living  poet  {Poems,  1876,  p.  93)  : 
IN  A   MOUNTAIN  PASS. 

(in   SCOTLAND.) 

To  what  wild  blasts  of  tyrannous  harmony 

Uprose  these  rocky  walls,  mass  threatening  mass, 

Dusk,  shapeless  shapes,  around  a  desolate  pass  ? 

What  deep  hearts  of  the  ancient  hills  set  free 

The  passion,  the  desire,  the  destiny 

Of  this  lost  stream  ?     Yon  clouds  that  break  and  form, 

Light  vanv/ard  squadrons  of  the  joyous  storm, 

They  gather  hither  from  what  untrack'd  sea? 

Primeval  kindied  !  here  the  mind  regains 

Its  vantage  ground  against  the  world  ;  here  thought 

Wings  up  the  silent  waste  of  air  on  broad 

Undaunted  pinions  ;  man's  imperial  pains 

Are  ours,  and  visiting  fears,  and  joy  unsought. 

Native  resolve,  and  partnership  with  God. 

Edward  Dowden. ' 

115 — ccxxvi.  Compare  the  following  pair  of  sonnets  {Small  Tableaux, 
1868,  pp.  14-15) : 

ON  AN   OLD  ROMAN  SHIELD 

FOUND   IN   THE   THAMES. 

Drowned  for  long  ages,  lost  to  human  reach, 
At  last  the  Roman  buckler  reappears, 

1  LI.  12-13.  Cp.  Wordsworth  (Laodaineia)  : 

•  Calm  pleasures  there  abide— majestic  pains.' 


388  Notes 


PAGE 


liliHtam  (iftlorbsborflj.  \ 

And  makes  an  old-world  clang  upon  the  beach,  ' 

Its  first  faint  voice  for  many  a  hundred  years  ;  ; 

Not  the  weird  noises  on  the  battle-field  ' 

Of  Marathon,  as  thrilling  legends  tell,  ; 

Could  speak  more  sadly  than  this  ancient  shield,  \ 

As  ringing  at  the  fisher's  feet  it  fell.  \ 

How  cam'st  thou  to  be  grappled  thus,  and  hauled  .j 

To  shore,  when  other  prey  was  sought,  not  thou?  \ 

How  strangely  was  thy  long-lost  chime  recalled,  ' 

As  when  the  arrows  struck  thee  !     Then,  as  now,  " 

The  tented  plain  was  thronged  with  armed  men  ;  ] 

Our  weapons  change,  we  quarrel  now  as  then  !  i 

ON    THE  SAME.  \ 
He  drew  it  home — he  heaved  it  to  the  bank — 

No  modern  waif,  but  an  old  Roman  targe  ;  ; 

The  mild  familiar  swan  in  terror  shrank  \ 

From  the  rude  plash,  and  left  the  weltering  marge.  ' 

Low  rang  the  iron  boss  ;  the  fisher  stared  x 

At  his  new  capture,  while,  in  mystic  tones,  \ 

The  lost  shield  exiled  its  legion,  whose  death-groans  \ 

And  clash  of  onset  it  had  seen  and  heard.  \ 

Oh  !  when  shall  better  thoughts  be  dear  to  man,  \ 

Than  rapine  and  ambition,  fraud  and  hate  ?  '' 

Oh  !  when  shall  War,  like  this  old  buckler,  fall  j 

Into  disuse,  drowned  by  its  own  dead  weight  ?  j 

And  Commerce,  buoyant  as  the  living  swan,  .\ 

Push  boldly  to  the  shore,  the  friend  of  all  ?  "^ 

Charles  ( Tennyson)  Turner.  \ 

114-115 — ccxxiv-ccxxvi.  From  Yarrow  Revisited,  and  Other 
Poems.     Published  under  that  title  in  1835. 

116 — ccxxvii.  'These  two  lines  are  adopted  from  a  MS.,  written 
about  1770,  which  accidentally  fell  into  my  possession  .  .  .' — 
Pr.  IV.,  iii,  134. 

ccxxviii.   '  Wordsworth  was  a  "high  churchman,"  and  also,  in 

his  prose  mind,  strongly  anti-Roman  Catholic,  partly  on  political  <. 

grounds  ;  but  that  it  was  otherwise  as  regards  his  mind  poetic  is  ] 

obvious  from  many  passages  in  his  Christian  poetry,  especially  ;. 
those  which  refer  to  the  monastic  system,  and  the  Schoolmen,  and 
his  sonnet  on  the  Blessed  Virgin,  whom  he  addresses  as 

"  Our  tainted  nature's  solitary  boast." 
He  used  to  say  that  the  idea  of  one  who  was  both  Virgin  and 
Mother  had  sunk  so  deep  into  the  heart  of  Humanity,  that  there 
it  must  ever  remain.' — Afr.  Aubrey  de  Vere's  Recollections  of 
Wordsworth,  in  Pr.  W.,  iii,  491.  Cp.  Henry  Constable's  two 
sonnets  {supra,  p.  259). 


^ 


Notes  389 

PAGE 

117— ccxxix,  2-4.  An  Elizabethan  commonplace  not  wholly  in  disuse 
still.  Cp.  H.  Constable's  sonnet  To  the  King  of  Scots  {z^.  Hazlitt, 
P-  33) :       '  The  pen  wherewith  thou  dost  so  heavenly  singe 
Made  of  a  quill  pluck't  from  an  angell's  wingc' 
R.  Barnfield's  Cassandra,  1595  (ed.  Roxburghe  Club,  p.  119)  ; 

'  No  pen  can  paint  thy  commendations  due: 
Save  only  that  pen,  which  no  pen  can  be, 
An  Angels  quill,  to  make  a  pen  for  thee.' 

and  H.  S.  Sutton  to-day  {Poems,  1848,  p.  12) : 

'  a  quill  from  out  an  angel's  wing. 
Held  in  an  angel's  hand,  could  ne'er  set  down 
The  sum  of  wonders  that  are  met  in  thee.' 

iiS — CCXXXI.   The  royal  saint  is  Henry  VI. 

116 — 118— ccxxvii-ccxxxi.  From  the  Ecclesiastical  Sonnets,  in 
Three  Parts.  {Ecclesiastical  Sketches,  1822).  For  Advertisement 
and  Notes  see  Pr.   W.,  ii,  126. 

ccxxxii.  '  I  will  mention  for  the  sake  of  the  friend  [Miss  Fen- 
wick]  who  is  writing  down  these  Notes  that  it  was  among  the  fine 
Scotch  firs  near  Ambleside,  and  particularly  Lhose  near  Green  Bank, 
that  I  have  over  and  over  again  paused  at  the  sight  of  this  image. 
Long  may  they  stand  to  afford  a  like  gratification  to  others  !  This 
wish  is  not  uncalled  for — several  of  their  brethren  having  already 
disappeared.' — Pr.  IF.,  iii,  150.  Wordsworth,  like  some  other 
poets,  had  a  particular  liking  for  the  pine  species,  and  made  several 
contributions  to  its  literature,  one  of  them  in  sonnet-form  {Poems, 
Chi ejly  of  Early  and  Late  Years,  1842,  p.  II3)  : 

THE  PINE  OF  MONTE  MARIO  AT  ROME. 
I  saw  far  off  the  dark  top  of  a  Pine 
Look  like  a  cloud — a  slender  stem  the  tie 
That  bound  it  to  its  native  earth — poised  high 
'Mid  evening  hues,  along  the  horizon  line. 
Striving  in  peace  each  other  to  outshine. 
But  when  I  learned  the  Tree  was  living  there. 
Saved  from  the  sordid  axe  by  Beaumont's  care. 
Oh,  what  a  gush  of  tenderness  was  mine  ! 
The  rescued  Pine-tree,  with  its  sky  so  bright 
And  cloud-like  beauty,  rich  in  thoughts  of  home, 
Death-parted  friends,  and  days  too  swift  in  flight, 
Supplanted  the  whole  majesty  of  Rome 
(Then  first  apparent  from  the  Pincian  Height) 
Crowned  with  St.  Peter's  everlasting  Dome.' 

'  '  Within  a  couple  of  hours  of  my  arrival  at  Rome,  I  saw  from  Monte  Pincio  the 
Pine  tree  as  described  in  the  sonnet;  and,  while  expressing  admiration  at  the  beauty 
of  its  appearance,  I  was  told  by  an  acquaintance  of  my  fellow-traveller,  who  happened 
to  join  us  at  the  moment,  that  a  price  had  been  paid  for  it  by  the  late  Sir  G.  Beaumont, 


PAGE 


2  go  Notes 

The  following  picture  by  a  living  sonneteer  will  not  be  out  of  place 
in  this  connexion  {Sonnets.     By  Sir  John  Hanmer,  Bart.     1840) : 
THE    PINE     IVOODS. 
We  stand  upon  the  moorish  mountain  side, 
From  age  to  age,  a  solemn  company  ; 
There  are  no  voices  in  our  paths,  but  we 
Hear  the  great  whirlwinds  roaring  loud  and  wide  ; 
And  like  the  sea-waves  have  our  boughs  replied, 
From  the  beginning,  to  their  stormy  glee  ; 
The  thunder  rolls  above  us,  and  some  tree 
Smites  with  his  bolt,  yet  doth  the  race  abide  ; 
Answering  all  times  ;  but  joyous,  when  the  sun 
Glints  on  the  peaks  that  clouds  no  longer  bear  ; 
And  the  young  shoots  to  flourish  have  begun  ; 
And  the  quick  seeds  through  the  blue  odorous  air 
From  the  expanding  cones  fall  one  by  one  ; 
And  silence  as  in  temples  dwelleth  there. 

Lord  Hanmer, 

Jig — ccxxxiil,  II.  Mr.  Emerson,  who  gives  both  of  these  Stafia  son- 
nets a  place  in  his  Parnassus,  perhaps  improves  this  line  by  mak- 
ing it  read  simply 

'  And  flashing  upwards  to  its  topmost  height.' 

This  and  the  next  sonnet  are  the  second  and  last  of  a  group  of 
four  on  Staffa,  in  the  first  of  which  the  poet  complains  of  having 
been  unable  to  enjoy  the  sight  of  the  cave  by  reason  of  the  crowd  of 
visitors.  '  The  reader  maybe  tempted  to  exclaim,  "  How  came  this 
and  the  two  following  Sonnets  to  be  written,  after  the  dissatisfaction 
expressed  in  the  preceding  one  ?"  In  fact,  at  the  risk  of  incurring  the 
reasonable  displeasure  of  the  master  of  the  steam-boat,  I  returned 
to  the  cave,  and  explored  it  under  circumstances  more  favourable 
to  those  imaginative  impressions  which  it  is  so  wonderfully  fitted 
to  make  upon  the  mind.' — Fr.   W.,  iii,  155. 

ccxxxiv.  '  Upon  the  head  of  the  columns  which  form  the  front 
of  the  cave,  rests  a  body  of  decomposed  basaltic  matter,  which  was 
richly  decorated  with  that  large  bright  flower,  the  ox-eyed  daisy.  I 
had  noticed  the  same  flower  growing  with  profusion  among  the  bold 
rocks  on  the  western  coast  of  the  Isle  of  Man  ;  making  a  brilliant 
contrast  with  their  black  and  gloomy  surfaces.' — Pr.  IV.,  iii,  155. 
118-120— ccxxxii-ccxxxv.  From  the  Poems,  Composed  or  Sug- 
gested DURING  A  Tour,  in  the  Summer  of  1833.  (Yarrow 
Revisited,  &c.,  1B35.) 

upon  condition  that  the  proprietor  should  not  act  upon  his  known  intention  of  cut- 
ting it  down.' — Pr,  IK,  iii,  89  (which  see  also  for  further  remarks). 


Notes  391 

PACE 

120 — CCXXXVI.  From  Poems  on  Various  Subjects,  by  S.  T.  Coleridge 
late  of  yesus  College,  Cambridge.  1796.  '  One  night  in  Winter,  on 
leaving  a  College-friend's  room,  with  whom  I  had  supped,  I  care- 
lessly took  away  with  me  "The  Robbers"  a  drama,  the  very 
name  of  which  I  had  never  before  heard  of  : — A  Winter  mid-night 
— the  wind  high — and  "  The  Robbers  "  for  the  first  time  ! — The 
readers  of  Schiller  will  conceive  what  I  felt.  Schiller  introduces 
no  supernatural  beings  ;  yet  his  human  beings  agitate  and  astonish, 
more  than  all  the  goblin  rout — even  of  Shakespeare.' — .S*.  T.  C. 
L.  4.  '  The  Father  of  the  Moor,  in  the  Play  of  The  Robbers,' 
— S.  T.  C.  Writing  to  Dyce  in  1833  acknowledging  a  copy  of 
the  Specimens  of  Etzglis/i  Sonnets,  published  that  year  and  dedi- 
cated to  him,  W' ordsworth  says  {Prose  Works,  iii,  336)  :  '  The 
selection  of  sonnets  appears  to  me  to  be  very  judicious.  If  I  were 
inclined  to  make  an  exception,  it  would  be  in  the  single  case  of 
the  sonnet  of  Coleridge  upon  "  Schiller,"  which  is  too  much  of  a 
rant  for  my  taste.  The  one  by  him  upon  "  Linley's  Music  "  is 
much  superior  in  execution  ;  indeed,  as  a  strain  of  feeling,  and 
for  unity  of  effect,  it  is  very  happily  done.'  The  reader  can  judge 
for  himself.  {Sibylline  Leaves,  1817,  p.  255) : 
LI^^ES  TO  IF.  L.,  ESQ., 

WHILE  HE   SANG   A   SONG   TO  PURCELl's   MUSIC. 

WTiile  my  young  cheek  retains  its  healthful  hues, 
And  I  have  many  friends  who  hold  me  dear  ; 
Linley  !  mcthinks  I  would  not  often  hear 
Such  melodies  as  thine,  lest  I  should  lose 
All  memoiy  of  the  wrongs  and  sore  distress 
For* which  my  miserable  brethren  weep  ! 
But  should  uncomforted  misfortunes  steep 
My  daily  bread  in  tears  and  bitterness  ; 
And  if  at  death's  dread  moment  I  should  lie 
With  no  beloved  face  at  my  bed-side. 
To  fix  the  last  glance  of  my  closing  eye, 
Methinks  such  strains,  breath'd  by  my  angel-guide, 
Would  make  me  pass  the  cup  of  anguish  by. 
Mix  with  the  blest,  nor  know  that  I  had  died  ! 
Coleridge's  own  estimate  of  his  Schiller  sonnet  was  not  quite  so 
humble.   He  gave  it  a  place  among  the  Bowles  elect,  and  in  the  copy 
of  that  pamphlet  described  on  p.  362  there  is  this  note  under  it  in  his 
handwriting :  '  I  affirm,  John  Thelwall!  that  the  six  last  lines  of  this 
Sonnet  to  Schiller  are  strong  and  fiery;  and  you  are  the  only  one  who 
thinks  otherwise. — There's  a  spurt  of  author-like  vanity  for  you  ! ' 
121 — ccxxxvii.   This  sonnet  is  not  in  the  first  edition  of  the  Poems,  as 
above  ;  but  it  appears  in  the  Bowles-pamphlet  and  in  the  second 


392  Notes 


PACE 


^amntl  OTaglor  Cokribge. 


edition  of  the  Poems  (1797),  which  were  nearly  simultaneous.  I 
give  it  as  finally  amended  in  the  errata-list  of  the  Sibylline  Leaves. 

121— ccxxxviii.  From  the  Poetical  Works,  1829.  First  printed  in 
Blackwood' s  Magazine,  November,  1819.  '  This  sonnet  is  very 
characteristic  of  the  rich  indolence  of  the  author's  temperament. 
The  very  toning  of  the  rhymes  is  as  careless  as  the  mood  in  which 
he  is  indulging.' — Leigh  Hunt. 

122 — ccxxxix.  From  the  Letters,  Conversations,  atid  Recollections  of 
S.  T.  Coleridge,  1836,  i,  144,  as  amended  in  Mr.  Shepherd's  edition. 
'How  it  came  into  my  possession,' says  the  anonymous  editor 
[Thomas  Allsop],  '  I  have  now  forgotten;  though  I  have  some  faint 
impression  that  I  wrote  it  down  from  dictation,  and  that  it  was  the 
transcript  of  an  early,  a  very  early  sonnet,  written  probably  at  the 
time  when  the  author's  heart,  as  well  as  his  head,  was  with  Spinoza.' 


CCXL.  From  Psyche,  tenth  other  Poems.  By  the  late  Airs.  Henry 
Tighe  :  1811.  Under  date  January  27th,  1812,  Sir  James  Mack- 
intosh writes  in  his  journal :  '  Sorrow  seems  to  be  the  muse  of 
song,  and  from  Philomela  to  Mrs.  Tighe  the  most  plaintive  notes 
are  the  most  melodious.  I  have  read  "  Psyche  "  ;  I  am  sorry  that 
Mrs.  Tighe  chose  such  a  story  :  it  is  both  too  mystical  and  too 
much  exhausted.  For  the  first  three  cantos  I  felt  a  sort  of  languid 
elegance  and  luscious  sweetness,  which  had  something  of  the  same 
effect  as  if  I  had  been  overpowered  by  perfumes  ;  but  the  three 
last  are  of  such  exquisite  beauty  that  they  quite  silence  me.  They 
are  beyond  all  doubt  the  most  faultless  series  of  verses  ever  pro- 
duced by  a  woman.'  (^Memoirs,  &c.  Edited  by  his  Son  :  1836,  ii, 
195).  Considerable  extracts  from  this  lady's  principal  poem  {^Psyche; 
or.  The  Legend  of  Lave  :  1805)  and  her  admirable  lyric  The  Lily 
entire,  are  given  in  Chambers's  Cyclopccdia  of  English  Literature, 
Dyce's  Specimens  of  British  Poetesses  (1827),  and  Rowton's  Female 
Poets  of  Great  Btitain  (1848)  ;  but,  strangely  enough,  none  of  her 
Sonnets,  which  number  over  twenty,  and  deserve  to  be  classed 
with  the  very  best  that  had  been  written  by  women  up  to  her  time. 
I  therefore  make  a  second  selection  (ibid. ,  p.  233) : 
WRITTEN  AT  KILLARNEY. 

JULY   29,    1800. 

How  soft  the  pause  !  the  notes  melodious  cease, 
Which  from  each  feeling  could  an  echo  call  ; 
Rest  on  your  oars,  that  not  a  sound  may  fall 
To  interrupt  the  stillness  of  our  peace  : 


Notes  393 

The  fanning  west-wind  breathes  upon  our  cheeks, 

Yet  glowing  with  the  sun's  departed  beams. 

Through  the  blue  heavens  the  cloudless  moon  pours  streams 

Of  pure  resplendent  light,  in  silver  streaks 

Reflected  on  the  still,  unruthed  lake. 

The  Alpine  hills  in  solemn  silence  frown, 

While  the  dark  woods  night's  deepest  shades  embrown. 

And  now  once  more  that  soothing  strain  awake  ! 

Oh,  ever  to  my  heart,  with  magic  po\('er, 

Shall  those  sweet  sounds  recall  this  rapturous  hour ! 
Mrs.  Tighe  ought  not  to  be  omitted  in  an  enumeration  of  the  writers 
■who  were  read  by  Keats,  and  from  whom  consequently  his  poetry  may 
be  supposed  to  have  taken  some  of  its  colour.     He  names  her  in  his 
early  lines  'To  Some  Ladies*  {Poems,  1817,  p.  30). 

PAGE  Robert  ^oulbejT.- 

123 — CCXLI. — Wordsworth,  in  the  letter  to  Dyee  before  quoted  (ante,  p. 
391),  says  :  '  I  was  glad  to  see  Mr.  Southey's  "  Sonnet  to  Winter." . 
A  lyrical  poem  of  my  own,  upon  the  disasters  of  the  French  army 
in  Russia,'  has  so  striking  a  resemblance  to  it,  in  contemplating 
winter  under  two  aspects,  that,  in  justice  to  Mr.  Southey,  who  pre- 
ceded me,  I  ought  to  have  acknowledged  it  in  a  note  ;  and  I  shall 
do  so  upon  some  future  occasion.' 
This  sonnet,  written  in  r799,  and  given  here  from  the  Minor  Poems, 

18 15,  was  very  probably  suggested  by  one  of  the  unfortunate  Bamp- 

fylde's,  in  whom,  as  is  well  known,  Southey  took  a  special  interest.* 

{Sixteen  Sonnets,  1778,  p.  15) : 

OiV  CHRISTMAS. 
With  footstep  slow,  in  furry  pall  yclad, 
His  brows  enwreath'd  with  holly  never-sere, 
Old  Christmas  comes,  to  close  the  waned  year  ; 
And  aye  the  Shepherd's  heart  to  make  right  glad  ; 
Who,  when  his  teeming  flocks  are  homeward  had. 
To  blazing  hearth  repairs,  and  nut-brown  beer, 
And  views,  well-pleas'd,  the  ruddy  prattlers  dear 
Hug  the  grey  mongrel ;  meanwhile  maid  and  lad 
Squabble  for  roasted  crabs.     Thee,  Sire,  we  hail. 
Whether  thine  aged  limbs  thou  dost  enshroud 
In  vest  of  snowy  white  and  hoary  veil, 
Or  wrapp'st  thy  visage  in  a  sable  cloud  ; 
Thee  we  proclaim  with  mirth  and  cheer,  nor  fail 
To  greet  thee  well  with  many  a  carol  loud.^ 

yohn  Bampfylde. 

1  Poetical  Works,  ed.  1858,  iii,  87. 

2  See  Southey's  Specimens  of  the  Later  English  Poets,  1807,  iii,  434 ;  Sir  E. 
Brydges's  Censura  Litcraria,  2nd  ed.,  1815,  vii,  309  ;  and  a  most  interesting  account 
of  Bampfylde  in  a  Letter  from  Southey  to  Sir  E.  Brydges,  printed  in  Brydges's  A  itto- 
biograpJiy,  1834,  ii,  257.  and  in  Dyce's  Specimens  of  English  Sonnets,  1833,  216. 

2  Cp.  also  Barry  Cornwall's  sonnet  on  Winter,  as  under  ccLXViii. 


394  Notes 

■*• 

Hokrt  SoutljfjT. 

Bampfylde's  sonnets  have  little  of  the  divine  afflatus,  but  they  are  all 
regular  as  regards  form, and  attest  considerable  power  of  realistic  descrip- 
tion, with  occasional  pathos  ;  as  in  the  following  {ibid.,  pp.  1-16) : 

TO    THE  RED-BREAST. 
When  that  the  fields  put  on  their  gay  attire, 
Thou  silent  sitst  near  brake  or  river's  brim, 
"Whilst  the  gay  Thrush  sings  loud  from  covert  dim  ; 
But  when  pale  Winter  lights  the  social  fire. 
And  meads  with  slime  are  sprent  and  ways  with  mire, 
Thou  charm'st  us  with  thy  soft  and  solemn  hymn 
From  battlement,  or  barn,  or  hay-stack  trim  ; 
And  now  not  seldom  tun'st,  as  if  for  hire. 
Thy  thrilling  pipe  to  me,  waiting  to  catch 
The  pittance  due  to  thy  well-warbled  song : 
Sweet  bird  !  sing  on  ;  for  oft  near  lonely  hatch, 
Like  thee.  Myself  have  pleas'd  the  rustic  throng, 
And  oft  for  entrance  'neath  the  peaceful  thatch, 
Full  many  a  tale  have  told  and  ditty  long. 

yohn  Batnpfylde. 

ON  A    WET  SUMMER. 

All  ye  who  far  from  town,  in  rural  hall. 

Like  me,  were  wont  to  dwell  near  pleasant  field, 

Enjoying  all  the  sunny  day  did  yield. 

With  me  the  change  lament,  in  irksome  thrall 

By  rains  incessant  held  ;  for  now  no  call 

From  early  Swain  invites  my  hand  to  wield 

The  scythe  ;  in  parlour  dim  I  sit  conceal'd. 

And  mark  the  lessening  sand  from  hour-glass  fall, 

Or  'neath  my  window  view  the  wistful  train 

Of  dripping  poultry,  whom  tlie  vine's  broad  leaves 

Shelter  no  more.      Mute  is  the  mournful  plain. 

Silent  the  swallow  sits  beneath  the  thatch, 

And  vacant  hind  hangs  pensive  o'er  his  hatch. 

Counting  the  frequent  drop  from  reeded  eaves. 

John  Batnpfylde. 

PAGE 

123 — CCXLII.  This  early  sonnet  of  Lamb's— one  of  his  'ewe  lambs,'  as  he 
so  feelingly  called  his  sonnets  when  pleading  with  Coleridge  to  stay 
his  critical  knife  ' — was  sent  in  a  letter,  dated  2  Jan.,  1797,  for  in- 
sertion in  the  joint  Coleridge-Lamb-Lloyd  volume  oi  Poems  (1797), 
with  a  request  that  it  might  be  printed  '  next  after  my  other  Sonnet 
to  my  Sister'  {Life,  Letters,  and  Writings,  ed.  Fitzgerald,  1876,  i, 
354) ;  but  Coleridge,  probably  for  reasons  deducible  from  Lamb's 
letter  dated  eight  days  later  {ibid.,  i,  362),  and  other  portions  of 
their  correspondence,  excluded  it.    It  afterwards  appeared  in  The 

>  Lamb  to  Coleridge,  10  June,  1796  (Li/e,  Letters,  &c.,  as  above,  i,  308):  '  I  charge 
you,  Coleridge,  spare  my  ewe  lambs.' 


Notes  395 

Monthly  Magazine  for  October  of  that  year,  and  was  next  printed, 
I  believe,  by  Talfourd  in  the  Letters  (1837,  i,  59).  A  second  ex- 
ample will  show  that  Coleridge  by  no  means  always  had  it  his  own 
way  with  the  'ewe  lambs.'  The  letter  containing  Elia's  remon- 
strance continues  :  '  I  do  not  know  that  I  entirely  agree  with  you 
in  your  stricture  upon  my  Sonnet  "To  Innocence."  To  men  whose 
hearts  are  not  quite  deadened  by  their  commerce  with  the  world, 
innocence  (no  longer  familiar)  becomes  an  awful  idea.  So  I  felt 
when  I  wrote  it.'  Not  only  was  the  sonnet  inserted  in  the  joint- 
volume  as  Lamb  wished,  but  we  find  it  also  in  the  Bowles-supple- 
ment, with  a  foot-note  on  its  eleventh  line  which  looks  very  like 
Coleridge's  amends  to  Lamb: — '  Innocence,  which  while  we  possess 
it,  is  playful  as  a  babe,  becomes  awful  when  it  has  departed  from 
us.  This  is  the  sentiment  of  the  line, — ^a  fine  sentiment,  and  nobly 
expressed.'     The  sonnet  is  as  follows  {Poems,  &c.,  1797,  p.  223)  : 

"We  were  two  pretty  babes  ;  the  youngest  she, 
The  youngest,  and  the  loveliest  far  (I  ween) 
And  Innocence  her  name  :  the  time  has  been 
We  two  did  love  each  other's  company  ; 
Time  was,  we  two  had  wept  to  have  been  apart. 
But  when,  by  shew  of  seeming  good  beguil'd, 
I  left  the  garb  and  manners  of  a  child, 
And  my  first  love,  for  man's  society. 
Defiling  with  the  world  my  virgin  heart — 
My  lov'd  companion  dropt  a  tear,  and  fled, 
And  hid  in  deepest  shades  her  awful  head. 
Beloved  !  who  shall  tell  me,  where  thou  art 
In  what  delicious  Eden  to  be  found  ? 
That  I  may  seek  thee,  the  wide  world  around. 
1795-' 


1  In  an  earlier  letter  to  Coleridge,  Lamb  says  of  this  sonnet  (ibid.,  i,  292)  :  '  The 
next  and  last  I  value  most  of  all.     'Twas  composed  close  upon  the  heels  of  the  last 
in  th-it  very  wood  1  had  in  mind  when   I  wrote  "  Methmks  how  dainty  sweet 
(Coleridge's  Poevis,  1796.  P-  56]   •  •  •  Since  writing  it,^I  have  found  in  a  poem  by 
Hamilton  of  Bangour,  these  two  lines  to  "  Happiness: 

"  Nun,  sober  and  devout,  where  art  thou  fled 
To  hide  in  shades  thy  meek,  contented  head  ?  " 
Lines  eminently  beautiful  ;  but  I  do  not  remember  having  read  them  previously, 
for  the  credit  of  my  tenth  and  eleventh  lines.     Parnell  has  two  lines  (which  probably 
suggested  the  above)  to  "  Contentment  :  " 

"  Whither,  ah  !  whither  art  thou  fled,  ^_ 
To  hide  thy  meek,  contented  head  V  " 
Cowley's  exquisite  "  Elegy  on  the  Death  of  his  friend  Harvey,"  suggested  the  phrase 

of"  we  two  : "  ,       j-  j      ^  1 

"  Was  there  a  tree  that  did  not  know 
The  love  betwixt  us  two  ''."  ' 
May  not  Lamb  have  had  Marvell's  beautiful  '  Garden  '  in  his  thoughts  too  ?-(a;;«- 
plete  IVorks.  ed.  Grosart,  1872,  i,  61)  : 

'  Fair  Quiet,  have  I  found  thee  here. 
And  Innocence,  thy  sister  dear  ! 
Mistaken  long,  I  sought  you  then 
In  busie  companies  of  men.' 


396  Notes 

p^GE  Ckrlcs  f  amb-. 

124 — CCXLIII.  The  original  version  {Examiner,  June  20,  1819)  has  the 
more  personal  '  this  '  for  that  in  1.  6  : 

'  To  this  dry  drudgery  of  the  desk's  dead  wood.' 

CCXLIV.  In  a  letter  from  Lamb  to  Miss  Betham,  written,  it  is 
believed,  in  1815,  and  printed  in  Eraser's  Magazine,  July,  1S78, 
there  occurs  this  very  characteristic  outburst  :  '  O  darling  laziness  ! 
heaven  of  Epicurus  !  Saints'  Everlasting  Rest  !  that  I  could  drink 
vast  potations  of  thee  thro'  unmeasured  Eternity — Otium  cum  vel 
sine  dignitate.  Scandalous,  dishonourable,  any  kind  of  repose.  I 
stand  not  upon  the  dignified  sort.  Accursed,  damned  desks,  trade, 
commerce,  business.  Inventions  of  that  old  original  busybody, 
brain-working  Satan — Sabbathless,  restless  Satan.  A  curse  re- 
lieves :  do  you  ever  try  it  ?' 

ccxLiii-ccxLiv.  From  Album  Verses,  with  a  few  Others  :  1830. 
'  In  closing  my  enumeration  of  the  capabilities  of  the  sonnet,'  says 
Henry  Reed  {Lectures,  &c.,  as  before,  ii,  269),  '  there  is  one  other 
purpose  to  which  it  was  equal.     It  could  express  the  feelings  of 
Charles  Lamb.     Why  of  Charles  Lamb  more  than  of  any  one 
else  ?     Reader,  if  you  ask  that  question,  you  have  not  yet  learned 
the  dear  mystery  of   those  two  monosyllables,  "  Charles  Lamb." 
But  if  you  have  been  more  fortunate,  how  much  of  the  spirit  of 
"  Elia  "  will  you  not  recognise  in  these  two  brief  poems  ! ' 
125 — CCXLV.   '  In  a  leaf  of  a  quarto  edition   of  the  "  Lives  of  the 
Saints,  written  in  Spanish  by  the  learned  and  reverend  father, 
Alfonso  Villegas,  Divine,  of  the  Order  of  St.  Dominick,  set  forth 
in  English  by  John  Heigham,  Anno  1630,"  bought  at  a  Catholic 
book-shop  in  Duke-street,  Lincoln's  Inn  Fields,  I  found,  carefully 
inserted,  a  painted  flower,  seemingly  coeval  with  the  book  itself  ; 
and  did  not,  for  some  time,  discover  that  it  opened  in  the  middle, 
and  was  the  cover  to  a  very  humble  draught  of  a  St.  Anne,  with 
the  Virgin  and  Child  ;  doubtless  the  performance  of  some  poor 
but  pious  Catholic,  whose  meditations  it  assisted.' — C.  L.     It  is  a 
satisfaction  to  be  able  to  give  this  fine  sonnet  as  Lamb  wrote  it 
{AtheticEttm,  February  15,  1834).    Only  in  one  edition  of  his  Poems 
— that  published  by  Moxon  in   1836 — will  it  be  found  free  of  a 
disastrous  corruption  in  the  last  line. 
The  lovers  of  Elia,  especially  those  of  them  who  may  have  visited  the 
sweet  little  country  church-yard  of  Edmonton,  where  brother  and  sister 
lie  in  one  grave  together,  will  need  no  apology  for  the  following  sonnet, 
addressed  to  Mary  Lamb  after  her  brother's  death,  by  his  friend  and  pub- 
lisher, and  the  husband  of  his  foster-child  Emma  Isola  :  '  It  so  beau- 


Notes  307 

tifully  embodies,'  says  Talfourd  {Final Memorials,  1848,  ii,  236),  'the 
reverential  love  with  which  the  sleeping  and  the  mourning  were  regarded 
by  one  of  their  nearest  Ix'mnds.'  {Sonneis  by  Edzuard Moxon.  Part  Second, 
1835,  p.  18)  : 

Here  sleeps  beneath  this  bank,  where  daisies  grow, 
The  kindliest  sprite  earth  holds  within  her  breast  ; 
In  such  a  spot  I  would  this  frame  should  rest. 
When  I  to  join  my  friend  far  hence  shall  go. 
His  only  mate  is  now  the  minstrel  lark, 
Who  chaunts  her  morning  music  o'er  his  bed. 
Save  she  who  comes  each  evening,  ere  the  bark 
Of  watch-dog  gathers  drowsy  folds,  to  shed 
A  sister's  tears.     Kind  Heaven,  upon  her  head 
Do  thou  in  dove-like  guise  thy  spirit  pour. 
And  in  her  aged  path  some  flow'rets  spread 
Of  earthly  joy,  should  Time  for  her  in  store 
Have  weary  days  and  nights,  ere  she  shall  greet 
Him  whom  she  longs  in  Paradise  to  meet. 

Edward  Moxon, 

lostulr    lliiivto    Kilbik. 

PAGE 

125— CCXLVI.  From  the  Life  of  the  Rev.  Joseph  Blanco  White,  Written 
by  Himself:  with  Portions  of  his  Correspondence.  Edited  by  John 
Hamilton  Thorn.  1845,  iii,  48  :  under  this  entry  in  the  author's 
Journal — '  October  16th,  1838.  In  copying  my  Sonnet  on  Night 
and  Death  for  a  friend,  I  have  made  some  corrections.  It  is  now 
as  follows.'  Two  letters  from  Coleridge  to  White  {ibid.,  i,  439-443) 
have  an  important  bearing  on  the  sonnet.  In  the  first  of  these, 
dated  from  Mr.  Gillman's  house,  'Grove,  Highgate,  2Sth  Nov., 
1827,' Coleridge  writes  :  '  I  have  now  before  me  two  fragments  of 
Letters  begun,  the  one  in  acknowledgment  of  the  finest  and  most 
grandly  conceived  Sonnet  in  our  Language,— (at  least,  it  is  only  in 
Milton's  and  in  Wordsworth's  Sonnets  that  I  recollect  any  rival, — 
and  this  is  not  my  judgment  alone,  but  that  of  the  man  hcxxI  tqoxrjv 
<pz/lo«aAou  John  Hookham  Frere,)'&c.  In  the  second  letter, with- 
out date,  but  written  some  time  subsequently  to  the  other,  we  find 
him  disavowing  with  astonishment  and  concern  the  charge  of  having 
unauthorisedly  published  a  sonnet  of  White's.  We  need  be  at  no  loss 
as  to  the  common  subject  of  these  references  ;  and  the  alleged  publi- 
cation, if  true,  was  doubtless  the  first  appearance  in  print  of  the  great 
sonnet  on  A^'ight  and  Death.  Unluckily  the  correspondence  affords 
no  clue  whatever  to  the  locality  of  that  publication  ;  nor,  so  far  as  I 
am  aware,  has  it  ever  been  traced.  This  disappearance,  which  would 
be  sufficiently  regrettable  had  it  no  other  consequence  than  that  of 
depriving  us  of  the  satisfaction  of  seeing  the  poem  precisely  as  first 


398  Notes 

lostplj   ^laitco  S2tl)itc. 

cast  by  its  author,  and  as  seen  by  Coleridge  when  he  characterized 
it  so  highly,  is  all  the  more  unfortunate  from  the  circumstance  that 
at  the  period  White  made  his  final  version  he  was  in  such  a  state  of 
bodily  anguish  as  specially  unfitted  him  for  that  work  of  alteration 
which  is  so  rarely  successful.  It  is  therefore  with  no  ordinary  plea- 
sure that  I  am  able  to  present  the  reader  with  the  sonnet  in  its 
original  form,  showing  important  variations  from  the  received  text. 
For  this  the  public  is  indebted  to  the  Rev.  Robert  Perceval  Graves, 
of  Dublin, — name  linked  with  precious  memories  ! — who  has 
favoured  me  with  a  transcript  which  he  took  many  years  ago,  cer- 
tainly some  time  between  1832-1834,  and  almost  certainly  from  an 
autograph,  having  then  been  personally  acquainted  with  the  author. 

It  is  as  follows  : — 

NIGHT   AND    DEATH. 

•  Mysterious  Night  !  when  the  first  Man  but  knew 

Thee  by  report,  unseen,  and  heard  thy  name, 
Did  he  not  tremble  for  this  lovely  Frame, 
This  glorious  canopy  of  Light  and  Blue  ? 
Yet  'neath  a  curtain  of  translucent  dew, 
Bathed  in  the  rays  of  the  great  setting  Flame, 
Hesperus  with  the  Host  of  Heaven  came,  * 

And  lo  !  Creation  widened  on  his  view  !     • 
Who  could  have  thought  what  Darkness  lay  concealed 
Within  thy  beams,  O  Sun  ?  or  who  could  find. 
Whilst  fly  and  leaf  and  insect  stood  revealed, 
That  to  such  endless  Orbs  thou  mad'st  us  blind  ? 
Weak  man  !  why  to  shun  Death  this  anxious  strife  ? 
If  Light  can  thus  deceive,  wherefore  not  Life  ?' 

Opinion  will  of  course  be  divided  on  the  comparative  merit  of  the  two 
versions.  For  my  own  part,  though  feeling  obliged  to  recognize  the  later  as 
the  authoritative  text  still,  I  cannotbut  on  the  whole  agree  with  Mr.  Graves 
in  preferring  the  earlier ;  and  for  the  following  reasons, which  arewell  put 
in  his  own  words: — 'L.  i."the  first  Man"  brings  more  simply  before  the 
mind  the  dominant  idea  ;  /ar^wi*  embarrasses  it.  2.  Against  the  intro- 
duction of  the  word  divine,  it  may  be  urged  that  we  do  not  want,  it  is 

1  Note  that  in  this  and  the  only  other  sonnet  he  is  known  to  have  written  [Life, 
&c.,  i,  430— 'On  hearins;  myself  called  an  Old  Man  for  the  first  time,  at  the  age  of 
fifty  :'  first  printed  in  The  Casket,  1829),  White  disposes  the  rimes  of  his  tercets  in  the 
order  for  which  he  indicates  a  preference  in  an  article  by  him  on  '  The  Sonnet '  (  The 
Christian  Teacher,  New  Series,  vol.  i,  1839)  :  '  The  best  English  writers  of  Sonnets 
perceiving  not  the  unsuitableness  of  that  Form  of  poetry  to  the  "  English  Language," 
but  the  weakness  of  sound  under  which  English  rhymes  generally  labour,  have  fre- 
quently approximated  them  lo  each  other  in  the  last  six  lines  of  the  Sonnet,  making 
the  first  four  to  rhyme  alternately,  and  reducing  the  two  last  to  a  couplet.'  Samuel 
Rogers  has  some  lines  (Written  at  Midnight,  Sept.  3,  1848),  beginning 

'  If  Day  reveals  such  wonders  by  her  Light,' 
which  were  evidently  suggested  by  White's  famous  sonnet. 


Notes  399 

rather  incumbering,  to  be  told  the  origin  of  the  report.  But  being  told 
that  it  is  divine  interferes  with  the  thought  ;  for  information  from  such  a 
source  would  be  calculated  to  take  away  dread  of  the  approaching  change. 
If  the  word  is  inserted  merely  to  justify  the  word  report,  no  other  man 
but  Adam  then  being  in  existence,  it  indicates  a  fault  in  both  versions. 
Perhaps  it  would  have  been  simpler  and  better  if  the  approach  of  the 
sun  to  the  horizon  as  observed  by  the  first  man,  and  the  decreasing  light, 
had  been  given  as  the  cause  of  his  imagined  terror.  8.  in  tnan's  view  : 
a  change  for  the  worse  in  every  way.  It  is  most  harsh  in  sound,  and 
the  poet  has  no  right  to  speak  of  man  in  the  abstract  in  connexion  with 
the  momentary  effect  upon  the  one  man,  indicated  by  the  lo !  at  the 
beginning  of  the  line.  "On  his  view  "  reads  smoothly,  and  just  says 
what  is  wanted,  [ii.  It  were  to  be  wished  that  the  recovered  version 
had  removed  the  tautological  blemish  from  which  this  line  suffers,  as 
might  easily  and  happily  be  done  by  the  substitution  of  '  flower '  for 
y?y.]  12.  "endless"  seems  better  to  describe  the  action  of  the  first 
man's  mind  as  he  observes,  rather  traversing  space  and  the  bright 
objects  it  contains,  than  counting,  or  attempting  to  count,  them;  which 
would  be  an  exercise  of  the  mind  less  simple  and  less  likely  to  be  imme- 
diate. 13.  Here  again  both  sound  and  sense  are  in  favour  of  the 
original  line.  Nothing  can  be  more  prosaic  and  poor  than  the  first  five 
monosyllables  in  the  corrected  line  ;  ?.nd  then  and  shun  follow  each 
other  most  cacophonously.  The  original  line,  if  not  much  superior — it 
is  superior — in  sound,  has  a  pathos  which  the  corrected  line  has  not ; 
and  it  is  properly  addressed  to  the  whole  family  of  man.' 

Of  this  great  sonnet  Leigh  Hunt  well  said  {Book  oftlie  Sonnet,  i,  25S) 
that  in  point  of  thought  it  '  stands  supreme,  perhaps  above  all  in  any 
language  :  nor  can  we  ponder  it  too  deeply,  or  with  too  hopeful  a  reve- 
rence.' Other  criticisms  will  be  found  in  Forster's  Biography  oi  Landor, 
ii,  517-8  ;  Archbishop  Trench's  Household  Book  of  English  Poetry,  p. 
413  ;  and  The  Spectator  of  December  20,  1873. 

The  following  lines,  written  in  1845  by  the  daughter  of  S.  T.  Cole- 
ridge, find  an  appropriate  place  here.  {Memoir  and  Letters  of  Sara 
Coleridge,  Edited  by  h^r  Daughter,  1873,  ii,  186): 

BLANCO  WHITE. 
Couldst  thou  in  calmness  yield  thy  mortal  breath, 
Without  the  Christian's  sure  and  certain  hope  ? 
Didst  thou  to  earth  confine  our  being's  scope. 
Yet,  fixed  on  One  Supreme  with  fervent  faith, 
Prompt  to  obey  what  conscience  witnesseth, 
As  one  intent  to  fly  the  eternal  wrath. 
Decline  the  ways  of  sin  that  downward  slope  ! 
O  thou  light-searching  spirit,-  that  didst  grope 
In  such  bleak  shadows  here,  'twixt  life  and  death, 


400  Notes 

losfplj  §I;rnro  ^lilbifc. 

To  thee  dare  I  bear  witness,  though  in  ruth — 
Brave  witness  like  thine  own — dare  hope  and  pray 
That  thou,  set  free  from  this  imprisoning  clay, 
Now  clad  in  raiment  of  pci^petual  youth, 
Mayst  find  -that  bliss  untold  'mid  endless  day 
Awaits  each  earnest  soul  that  lives  for  Truth. 

Sara  Coleridge. 

Since  writing  the  above  note  I  have  discovered  what,  until  White's 
charge  against  Coleridge  is  substantiated,  must  be  regarded  as  the  first 
appearance  on  the  typographical  horizon  of  the  Night  and  Death  sonnet; 
viz.,  in  TJie  Gentlema7i  s Magazine  for  May,  1835,  where  it  appears  ver- 
batim et  literatim  as  preserved  by  Mr.  Graves  from  an  earlier  date. 

PAGE 

126 — CCXLVII.  From  the  anonymous  y^;«arv«//2Mi',  the  Nympholept :  &c. 
With  Other  Poenis.   1821 — as  amended  in  his  Poetical  Works,  1846. 

ITorb  Sljurlok 

CCXLVIII.  Given,  with  the  next  in  the  text,  from  his  Poems  on 
Several  Occasions.  Second  Edition.  \^\th.  Appendix.  1813.  The 
issue  of  1822  is  also  called  '  Second  Edition.'  With  Thurlow  cp. 
Drummond,  cxix  and  cxxviii  (pp.  60-65). 
127 — CCXLix.  One  of  a  series  of  sonnets  written  on  a  journey  in  the  south 
of  England.     I  have  substituted  the  present  for  the  author's  title. 

CCL.  This  fine  example  of  the  didactic  sonnet,  given  from  the 
Select  Poems,  1821,  was  held  in  peculiar  esteem  by  '  the  gentle  Elia.' 
At  the  passage  '  a  thin  diet  of  dainty  words  '  in  his  essay  on  Some 
Sonnets  of  Sir  Philip  Sidney,  as  originally  printed  in  The  London 
Magazine,  September,  1823,  he  thus  introduces  it  in  a  foot-note  : 
*  A  profusion  of  verbal  dainties,  with  a  disproportionate  lack  of 
matter  and  circumstance,  is  I  think  one  reason  of  the  coldness  with 
which  the  public  has  received  the  poetry  of  a  nobleman  now  living; 
which,  upon  the  score  of  exquisite  diction  alotie,  is  entitled  to  some- 
thing better  than  neglect.*  I  will  venture  to  copy  one  of  his  Son- 
nets in  this  place,  which  for  quiet  sweetness,  and  unaffected  morality, 
has  scarcely  its  parallel  in  our  language.'  And  De  Quincey  records 
{Recollections  of  Charles  Lamb,  Boston,  1851,  i,  121):  '  That  I  might 
not  go  off  with  the  notion  that  he  read  only  his  own  verses,  after- 
wards he  read,  and  read  beautifully — for  of  all  our  poets  Lamb  only 
and  WoBdsworth  read  well — ^amost  beautiful  sonnet  of  Lord  Thurlow, 
on  "  Lacken  Water."'    Dyce  remarks  its 'moral beauty, 'and  Arch- 


Notes  4CI 

bishop  Trench  characterizes  it  as  '  a  sonnet  of  stately  and  thoughful 
beauty— one  which  no  anthology  of  English  sonnets  ought  hence- 
forward ever  to  omit.'    It  is  perhaps  in  the  fresh  and  vivid  nature- 
picture  it  presents  that  the  chief  merit  of  Thurlow's  sonnet  consists  ; 
and,  as  such,  it  may  be  compared  with  one  on  a  curiously  similar 
subject  from  the  pen  of  the  learned  historian  of  Devon (/'()^/wj,i788): 
THE   WOODCOCK. 
While  not  a  Wing  of  Insect-Being  floats, 
And  not  a  Murmur  moves  the  frozen  Air, 
Yon'  Ice-clad  Sedge,  with  tremulous  Wave,  denotes 
Amid  the  leafless  Copse,  that  Life  is  there. 
And  lo,  half-seen,  the  Bird  of  russet  Breast     > 
And  duskier  Pinion,  that  had  cleft  the  Skies 
Of  wild  inhospitable  Climes  in  quest 
Of  the  warm  Spring,  his  plashy  Labor  plies. 
Feed  on,  jDoor  Bird,  beneath  the  sheltering  Copse  ; 
And  near  thee  may  no  wanton  Spaniel  stray  ! 
Or  rising,  when  dim  Eve  her  Curtain  drops, 
Ah  !  may  no  Net  arrest  thy  darkling  Way  ! 
But  long  unpent  by  Frost,  o'erflow  the  Rill — 
And  many  an  Insect  meet  thy  delving  Bill  ! 

Kichard  Polwhele. 
LI.  9-14.  Cp.  his  sonnet  beginning 

'  This  forest  is  to  me  the  sweetest  college.' 
I  do  not  remember  having  seen  it  noticed  that  this  much-ridiculed 
nobleman  appears  to  have  anticipated  a  famous  sentiment  of  Words- 
worth's in  one  of  his  sonnets  {Poevis,  &c.,  as  above,  p.  197  : 


'  Souls  that  have  fed  upon  divinest  thought. 
Yet  lacking  utt'rance  of  their  musick's  store. 


'  1 


PAGE 

128 — CCLI.    The  Village  Patriarch,  Love,  and  Other  Poems  :  1834, 

CCLII.  One  of  a  series  entitled  '  Rhymed  Rambles '  (Poetical 
Works  of  the  Corn-Law  Phymer  :  1840),  of  which  the  Preface  de- 
serves to  be  quoted  for  its  bearing  on  our  subject.  '  If  Mr.  Hous- 
man  of  Lune  Bank  had  not  sent  me  a  copy  of  his  collection  of 
English  sonnets,  I  should  have  been  the  author  of  one  sonnet  only. 
I  never  liked  the  measure  of  the  legitimate  or  Petrarchan  sonnet. 
There  is  a  disagreeable  break  in  the  melody,  after  the  eighth  line. 
That  Milton  felt  this,  is  proved  by  the  fact,  that  he  frequently  ran 

'  Cp.  The  Excursion,  18 14,  Bk.  i  : 

'  Oh  !  many  are  the  Poets  that  are  sown 
By  Nature  ;  Men  endow'd  with  highest  gifts. 
The  vision  and  the  faculty  divine. 
Yet  wanting  the  accomplishment  of  Verse.' 

AA 


402  Notes 

©kiu^er  €IIiotf. 

the  eighth  line  into  the  ninth,  contrary  to  law.     Nor  can  I  agree 
with  Mr.  Housman,  that  a  sonnet  ending  with  a  couplet  is  therefore 
faulty  ;  on  the  contrary,  a  couplet  at  the  close  of  a  sonnet  has  often 
a  fine  effect.     So  thought  and  so  proved  Cowper,  and  our  elder 
poets  ;  and  there  are  in  Mr.  Housman's  collection  five  most  harmo- 
nious, yet  not  Petrarchan  sonnets,  by  Fitzadam,  composed  of  three 
elegiac  stanzas  and  a  couplet,  all  disconnected  in  rhyme,  but  not  in 
metre  ;  which  fully  shew  that  the  measure  of  the  sonnet,  as  he  has 
managed  it,  is  as  proper  for  a  long  and  serious  poem  as  the  Spen- 
serian stanza  itself.    The  sonnet,  I  believe,  has  become  popular  in 
those  languages  only  in  which  it  is  more  diilScult  to  avoid  similar 
rhymes  than  to  find  them.'    The  Spenserian  stanza,  requiring  four 
rhymes,  is  quite  as  difficult  as  the'Petrarchan  sonnet,  the  latter  being 
little  mor-e  than  a  series  of  couplets  and  triplets  ;  and  I  venture  to 
suggest  that — preceded  by  five  lines  linked  to  it  in  melody,  and  con- 
cluding occasionally  with  an  Alexandrine — or  preceded  by  four  lines 
only,  if  concluding  with  a  triplet — the  far-famed  measure  of  Spenser 
is  the  best  which  the  English  sonneteer  can  employ.     Of  this  the 
reader  may  judge  for  himself  ;  as,  in  these  sonnets,  (if  sonnets  they 
are,)  I  have  used  the  legitimate,  the  Spenserian,  and  other  forms.' 
Later,  in  a  note  on  the  concluding  sonnet  of  a  series  written  in  1848, 
entitled  '  The  Year  of  Seeds '  {More  Verse  and  Prose  by  the  Cortilaw 
Rhymer,  1850),  he  says  :  '  After  much  theory,  and  some  practice,  I 
venture  to  propose  the  measure  of  this  sonnet  as  a  pattern  to  english 
sonneteers  ;  for  while,  to  me,  the  Petrarchan,  in  our  language  is  at 
once  immelodious  and  inharmonious,  the  music  of  this,  in  its  linked 
unity,  is  both  sweet  and  various,  and  when  closed  by  an  alexandrine, 
majestic'     I  subjoin  the  sonnet : — 

And  to  the  Father  of  Eternal  days. 

And  fairest  things,  that  fairer  yet  will  be, 

Shall  I  no  song  of  adoration  raise. 

While  Passion's  world,  and  Life's  great  agony, 

Are  one  dread  hymn,  dread  Progresser  !  to  Thee? 

Thou,  Love,  art  Progress  !     And  be  thine  the  praise 

If  I  have  ever  lov'd  thy  voice  divine. 

And  o'er  the  sadness  of  my  slander'd  lays 

Flings  its  redeeming  charm  a  note  of  thine. 

Oh,  Gentlest  INIight  Almighty  !  if  of  mine 

One  strain  shall  live,  let  it  thy  impress  bear ; 

And  please  wherever  humble  virtues  twine 

The  rose  and  woodbine  with  the  thorns  of  care. 

Thriving  because  they  love  !     Thy  temple,  Lord,  is  there  ! 


>  See  Coleridge's  observation  under  ccvi  {ante,  p.  379). 


Notes  403 

These  extracts  from  Elliott  are  now  given  from  the  new  and  revised 
edition  of  his  Poetical  Works,  edited  by  his  Son,  Edwin  Elliott,  Rec- 
tor of  St.  John's,  Antigua.     2  vols.     1876. 


PAGE 


Milliam  ^tanlcir  |ioscoc. 


129 — CCLlli.  From  his  Poems,  1834  :  a  little  volume  by  the  eldest  son 
of  the  historian,  and  father  of  William  Caldwell  Roscoe,  which 
deserved  the  very  friendly  reception  accorded  it  by  '  Blackwood ' 
(February,  1835). 

CCLIV.  Yxova.  Foliage  J  or  Poems  Original  and  Translated  :  1818. 

This  sonnet,  so  characteristic  of  a  writer  who  cannot  be  more  truly 

or  happily  described  than  in  his  own  words  to  Haydon,  as 

'  One  of  the  spirits  chosen  by  heaven  to  turn 
The  sunny  side  of  things  to  human  eyes,' 

was  written  in  competition  with  Keats,  as  under  cccii  (p.  419),  on 
the  night  of  30th  December,  1816,  and  appeared  in  Tin  Examiner 
of  September  21st,  1817,  together  with  Keats's  sonnet,  extracted 
from  his  maiden  volume.     L.  4.  Mr.  Patmore  refers  to  the  same 
artifice  in  a  fine  simile  ( Tamerton  Church-  Tower,  iv,  3) : 
'  About  the  West  the  gilt  vane  reel'd 
And  poised  ;  and,  with  sweet  art. 
The  sudden,  jangling  changes  peal'd, 

Until,  around  my  heart. 
Conceits  of  brighter  times,  of  times 

The  brighter  for  past  storms. 
Clung  thick  as  bees,  when  brazen  chimes 
Call  down  the  hiveless  swarms.' 

I  add  a  latter  sonnet  {Poetical  Works,  edited  by  Thornton  Hunt, 
i860,  p.  277),  which  appeared  originally  in  The  Seer ;  or  Common- 
Places  Refreshed,  1840,  Pt.  I) : 

AN  ANGEL  IN  THE  HOUSE. 
How  sweet  it  were  if,  without  feeble  fright, 
Or  dying  of  the  dreadful  beauteous  sight. 
An  angel  came  to  us,  and  we  could  bear 
To  see  him  issue  from  the  silent  air 
At  evening  in  our  room,  and  bend  on  ours 
His  divine  eyes,  and  bring  us  fi'om  his  bowers 
News  of  dear  friends  and  children  who  have  never 
Been  dead  indeed, — as  we  shall  know  for  ever. 
Alas  !  we  think  not  what  we  daily  see 
About  our  hearths — angels  that  are  to  be. 
Or  may  be  if  they  will,  and  we  prepare 
Their  souls  and  ours  to  meet  in  happy  air  ; — 
A  child,  a  friend,  a  wife  whose  soft  heart  sings 
In  unison  with  ours,  breeding  its  future  wings. 


404  Notes 

P^irrg  I'lirhc  SlMfe. 

PAGE 

130 — CCLV-CCLVI.  From  his  Remains,  edited  by  Southey.  3  vols. 
1808-1822.  I  have  been  unable  to  discover  on  what  authority 
Professor  F.  \V.  Newman  prints  '  dread '  for  dead  in  1.  6  of  the 
former  of  these  sonnets,  in  his  little  Collection  of  Poetry  for  the 
Practice  of  Elocution,  1850. 

(H^arks  Siroiig. 

131 — CCLVII.  From  Sonnets,  by  Rev.  Charles  Strong,  J.M.,  Formerly 
Fellow  of  Wadham  College,  Oxford,  1835,  of  which  a  second  and 
enlarged  edition,  including  some  contributions  by  a  friend  (the  late 
Rev.  Carrington  Ley,  Vicar  of  Bere  Regis,  Dorsetshire),  was  pub- 
lished in  1862.  This  elegant  sonnet-writer,  and  accomplished  and 
delightful  man,  as  he  is  described  to  me  by  a  friend  who  knew  him 
well,  was  born  at  Tiverton,  Devonshire,  4  May,  1785,  and  received 
his  early  education  at  Blundell's  School  there.  He  became  Rector 
of  Broughton  Gifford,  Wilts,  in  1812,  which  he  resigned  in  1848  ; 
and  died  at  Dawlish,  Devonshire,  27  January,  1864.  Besides  his 
original  sonnets,  he  published  (anonymously)  Specimens  of  Somiets 
from  the  Most  Celebrated  Italiati  Poets,  with  Translations  (1827), 
the  firstfruits  of  a  love  for  the  arts  and  literature  of  Italy,  imbibed 
during  a  visit  to  that  country  in  1821-2.  It  is  to  Strong  that  the 
distich  in  Elton's  metrical  epistle  to  Clare  refers  (Cherry's  Xzy^aW 
Retnains  of  John  Clare,  1873,  p.  71) : 

'  Our  English  Petrarch  trundles  down 
To  Devon's  valley.' 

|obit  2(>UIsoit. 

CCLVIII.   From  The  Isle  of  Palms,  atid  Other  Poems  :  l8l2. 

132 — CCLIX.  Compare  Mr.  Rossetti's  fervent  and  solemn  sonnet  (/'^^•wj, 

1870,  p.  228): 

LOST  DAYS. 

The  lost  days  of  my  life  until  to-day. 
What  were  they,  could  I  see  them  on  the  street 
Lie  as  they  fell  ?     Would  they  be  ears  of  wheat 
Sown  once  for  food  but  trodden  into  clay? 
Or  golden  coins  squandered  and  still  to  pay? 
Or  drops  of  blood  dabbling  the  guilty  feet  ? 
Or  such  spilt  water  as  in  dreams  must  cheat 
The  throats  of  men  in  Hell,  who  thirst  alway? 
I  do  not  see  them  here  ;  but  after  death 
God  knows  I  know  the  faces  I  shall  see, 


Notes  405 

PAGE 

Each  one  a  murdered  self,  with  low  last  breath  : 
'  I  am  thyself, — what  hast  thou  done  to  me?' 
'And  I — and  I — thyself,'  (lo  !  each  one  saith,) 
'And  thou  thyself  to  all  eternity  !' 

Dante  Gabriel  Rossetti. 

133 — CCLXII,  13.  An  early  poem  of  the  laureate's  {Poems  by  Two 
Brothers,  1827,  p.  64)  has — 

'  high  Persepolis  of  old.' 

CCLXI-CCLXII.  To  these  illustrations  of  Sir  Aubrey  de  Vere's 
rare  descriptive  powers  I  add  part  of  the  exquisite  reminiscence, 
'  Rydal  with  Wordsworth '  (p.  20S),  which  in  The  Literary  Souvenir 
for  1834,  where  it  originally  appeared,  is  dated  '  Ambleside,  July 
30th,  1833.'     He  recalls — 

'  Lone  lakes  ;  rills  gushing  through  rock-rooted  trees  ; 

Peaked  mountains,  shadowing  vales  of  peacefulness  ; 

Glens,  echoing  to  the  flashing  waterfall. 

Then  that  sweet  twilight  isle,  with  friends  delayed 

Beside  a  ferny  bank,  'neath  oaks  and  yews  ; 

The  moon  between  two  mountain  peaks  embayed  ; 

Heaven  and  the  waters  dyed  with  sunset  hues  : 

And  He,  the  Poet  of  the  age  and  land. 

Discoursing,  as  we  wandered,  hand  in  hand.' 

132-133 — CCLix-CCLXii.  From^  Song  of  Faith,  Devout  Exercises,  and 
Sonnets  :  1842.  These  '  Sonnets,'  which  Wordsworth,  whose  friend- 
ship Sir  Aubrey  properly  esteemed  one  of  the  chief  honours  of  his 
later  life,  pronounced  to  be  '  the  best  of  modern  times,'  ^  and  his 
admirable  drama  Mary  Tudor  (1847),  were  republished  in  1875, 
each  with  a  Memoir  by  his  distinguished  son,  Mr.  Aubrey  de  Vere, 
who  has  nobly  employed  the  lyrical  and  dramatic  talents  bequeathed 
him  by  his  father,  and  ranks  among  the  very  foremost  living  sonnet- 
writers.  It  may  be  permitted  me  therefore  to  link  the  younger 
with  the  elder  in  this  place,  by  means  of  the  following  magnificent 
sonnet,  which  is  such  as  Landor  himself,  to  whom  the  series  is 
dedicated,  might  have  written,  had  he  not  unfortunately  '  sworn  a 
great  oath  '  never  to  write  a  sonnet  1  {The  Search  after  Proserpine, 
Recollections  of  Greece,  and  Other  Poems  :  1843,  p.  133,  as  amended 

1877) : 

THE  SUN  GOD. 

I  saw  the  Master  of  the  Sun.     He  stood 
High  in  his  luminous  car,  himself  more  bright  ; 
An  Archer  of  immeasurable  might : 
On  his  left  shoulder  hung  his  quivered  load  ; 

1  '  In  the  case  of  a  certain  poet  since  dead,  and  never  popular,  he  said  to  me,  "  I 
consider  his  sonnets  to  be  the  best  of  modern  times  ;  "  adding.  "  Of  course  I  am  not 
including  my  own  in  any  comparison  with  those  of  others."  '—Mr.  Aubrey  De  Vere's 
Recollections,  &c.,  as  before  (Wordsworth's  Prose  IVorks,  iii,  492). 


4o6  Notes 

Sir  ^ttbrtg  \z  ^nt.  ■> 

PAGE 

Spurned  by  his  Steeds  the  eastern  mountain  glowed  ; 

Forward  his  eager  eye,  and  brow  of  light 

He  bent  ;  and,  while  both  hands  that  arch  embowed, 

Shaft  after  shaft  pursued  the  flying  Night. 

No  wings  profaned  that  godlike  form  :  around 

His  neck  high  held  an  ever-moving  crowd 

Of  locks  hung  glistening  :  while  such  perfect  sound 

Fell  from  his  bowstring,  that  th'  etherial  dome 

Thrilled  as  a  dewdrop  ;  and  each  passing  cloud 

Expanded,  whitening  like  the  ocean  foam. 

Aubrey  de  Vere} 

ITorb  ^gron. 

134 — CCLXIII.  From  The  Prisoner  of  Chilian,  and  Other  Poems  :  1816. 
'  Bonnivard,  a  Genevese,  was  imprisoned  by  the  Duke  of  Savoy  in 
Chillon  on  the  lake  of  Geneva  for  his  courageous  defence  of  his 
country  against  the  tyranny  with  which  Piedmont  threatened  it 
during  the  first  half  of  the  seventeenth  century. — This  noble  Sonnet 

1  It  may  help  to  preserve  an  uncollected  criticism  of  Leigh  Hunt's  (one  of  those 
referred  to,  ante,  p.  315,  as  having  been  contributed  to  The  True  Sun  newspaper  in 
1833),  if  I  note  here  that  the  pretty  sonnet  at  p.  258  of  Mr.  De  Vere's  volume  of  1843 
(p.  50,  ed.  1877),  which  originally  appeared  in  the  same  issue  of  The  Litera7-y  Souvenir 
with  his  father's  sonnet  as  above,  was,  by  a  very  excusable  mistake,  which  must  have 
often  happened  since,  printed  as  Sir  Aubrey's.  Leigh  Hunt,  reviewing  the  annual, 
and  not  aware  that  an  error  had  been  made,  says  : 

'  The  laureate  of  the  present  volume  is  Sir  Aubrey  de  Vere,  who  is  worthy  to  be 
the  friend  of  Wordsworth.     He  has  a  sonnet  here,  recording  a  visit  he  paid  to  the 
great  poet ;  but  love  is  a  still  greater  inspirer  than  the  love  of  poetry,  and  the  follow- 
ing sonnet  is  so  good  that  we  could  not  help  extracting  it.  The  passages  in  particular 
■which  we  have  marked  in  italics,  are  very  beautiful.  Sir  Aubrey  might  repeat  them, 
if  he  had  written  nothing  else,  as  his  title-deeds  to  the  name  of  a  poet : 
She  whom  this  heart  must  ever  hold  most  dear 
(This  heart  in  happy  bondage  held  so  long) 
Began  to  sing.     At  first  a  gentle  fear 
Rosied  her  countenance  ;  for  she  is  young. 
And  he  who  loves  her  most  of  all  was  near  : 
But  when  at  last  her  voice  grew  full  and  strong, 
O  !  from  their  ambush  sweet,  how  rich  and  clear 
Leaped  the  bright  notes  abroad — a  rapturous  throng  1 
Her  little  hands  were  sometimes  flung  apart. 
And  sometimes  palm  to  palm  together  prest  ;   . 
While  wave-like  blushes  rising  /rojn  her  breast, 

^We  see  here  the  bosom  and  the  blushes  rising  together, — the  one,  as  it  were,  throw- 
ing up  the  other,  as  it  breathes) 

Kept  time  with  that  aerial  melody  ; 
.  A  music  to  the  sight ! — /  standing  nigh 
Received  tlie  falling  fountain  in  my  heart. 

This  is  a  beautiful  and  perfect  image,  expressed  with  the  force  and  simplicity  of  true 
feeling.'  Earlier  (in  The  Tatlcr,  March  3,  1831),  criticizing  Charles  Tennyson's 
maiden  volume,  Leigh  Hunt  had  remarked  as  '  delicate  and  picturesque  '  a  passage  in 
one  of  the  sonnets,  of  which  Mr.  De  Vere's  eleventh  verse  seems  to  me  to  be  a  recol- 
lection, as  his  thirteenth  is  of  Wordsworth's  '  soft  eye-music'  (Sonnets  and  Fugitive 
Pieces,  by  Charles  Tennyson,  1830,  p.  25)  : 

'  See'st  thou  her  blushes,  that  like  shadows  sweet 
Pass  upward  from  the  silence  of  the  heart.' 


Notes  407 

PAGE 

is  worthy  to  stand  near  Milton's  on  the  Vaudois  massacre.' — F.  T. 
Palgrave.  Mr.  Swinburne  {Essays  atid  Studies,  1875,  p.  250),  who 
justly  names  this  as  one  of  Byron's  '  noblest  andcompletest  poems,' 
says  that  '  his  few  sonnets  are  all  good  ; '  but,  as  was  evidently  the 
case  with  himself  when  editing  the  little  volume  in  which  his  cri- 
ticism first  appeared  {A  Selection  from  the  IVorks  of  Lord  Byron. 
Edited  and  Prefaced  by  Algernon  Chas.  Swiiibiirne  :  1866),  I  have 
been  unable  to  find  a  second  example  perfectly  suited  to  my  pur- 
pose. 

iokrt  JosroE. 

134-135— CCLXIV-CCLXV.  These  two  sonnets,  by  the  third  son  of 
William  Roscoe,  are  given,  the  former  from  his  anonymous  Chevy 
Chase,  a  Poem.  Founded  oh  the  Ancient  Ballad.  With  Other 
Poems  ;  and  the  latter  from  Poems  for  Youth.  By  a  Family  Circle  : 
both  volumes  bearing  date  1820. 

(Lljomas  ^Dublcbng. 

CCLXVI.  From  an  anonymous  little  volume  of  verse  published  in 
1818,  and  entitled  Sixty-Five  Sonnets.  With  Prefatory  Remarks  on 
the  accordance  of  the  Sonnet  with  the  powers  of  the  English  Lan- 
guage. Also  a  few  Miscellaneous  Poems  :  the  joint  performance  of 
Mr.  Doubleday  and  his  cousin,  Mr.  William  Greene.  Mr.  Double- 
day  afterwards  rose  to  eminence  as  a  writer  on  political,  social,  and 
financial  subjects  ;  but  besides  his  works  in  these  departments  he 
wrote  The  Italian  Wife,  a  Tragedy  (1823)  ;  Babington,  a  Tragedy 
(1825)  ;  Dioclesian,  a  Dramatic  Poem  (1829)  ;  Caius  Maritis,  an 
Historical  Drama  (1836)  ;  &c.  The  two  kinsmen  occupy  a  promi- 
nent place  as  song-writers  in  Mr.  Joseph  Crawhall's  Collection  of 
Right  Merrie  Garlands  for  NoJ-th  Cotmtiy  Anglers  (Newcastle- 
upon-Tyne,  1864),  v/hich  see  for  a  brief  notice  of  Mr.  Greene,  who 
died  in  1861,  leaving,  I  believe,  a  considerable  number  of  unpub- 
lished sonnets  to  which  I  have  failed  to  obtain  access. 
136 — CCLXVn.  From  The  Literary  Souvenir  for  1827. 

^rjTHit  l^alkr  l^rotter. 

For  recent  criticisms  on  Barry  Cornwall  and  his  poetry  the  student 
may  be  referred  to  Mr.  E.  C.  Stedman's  Victorian  Poets,  1876,  The 
Edinburgh  Review  for  April  and  The  Nitteteenth  Century  for  October, 
1878.  An  early  one  by  Hazlitt,  bearing  on  the  Sonnets,  may  be  quoted 
for  its  brevity  :  '  It  only  remains  to  speak  of  Mr.  Barry  Cornwall,  who, 
both  in  the  Drama,  and  in  his  other  poems,  has  shewn  brilliancy  and 
tenderness  of  fancy,  and  a  fidelity  to  truth  and  nature,  in  conceiving  the 


4o8  Notes 

^rgatt  dialler  ^rocte. 

finer  movements  of  the  mind  equal  to  the  felicity  of  his  execution  in 
expressing  them.' ' 

PAGE 

136 — ccLXVlll.  From  A  Siciliati  Story,  with  Diego  De  Moniilla,  and 
Other  Poems  :  1820.     It  is  to  this  sonnet  that  Leigh  Hunt  alludes 
in  his  delicious  little  book  The  Months,  1821,  p.  115  :   '  The  chief 
business  of  October,  in  the  great  economy  of  nature,  is  dissemina- 
tion, which  is  performed  among  other  means  by  tlie  high  winds 
which  now  return.   Their  effect  upon  the  imagination,  or  that  other 
utility  of  pleasure  which  nature  produces  upon  the  mind  in  moments 
apparently  the  most  dreary,  is  almost  universally  felt,  though  every- 
body cannot  express  it  like  the  poet.'     Had  Leigh  Hunt  been 
writing  five-and-thirty-years  later,  I  have  little  doubt  that  he  would 
have  drawn  upon  another  poet-friend  for  an  additional  illustration. 
(Day  and  Night  Songs,  1854,  as  amended  1877)  : 
AUTUMNAL    SONNET. 
Now  Autumn's  fire  bums  slowly  along  the  woods, 
And  day  by  day  the  dead  leaves  fall  and  melt. 
And  night  by  night  the  monitory  blast 
Wails  in  the  key-hole,  telling  how  it  pass'd 
O'er  empty  fields,  or  upland  solitudes, 
*  Or  grim  wide  wave  ;  and  now  the  power  is  felt 

Of  melancholy,  tenderer  in  its  moods 
Than  any  joy  indulgent  summer  dealt. 
Dear  friends,  together  in  the  glimmering  eve, 
Pensive  and  glad,  with  tones  that  recognize 
The  soft  invisible  dew  in  each  one's  eyes. 
It  may  be,  somewhat  thus  we  shall  have  leave 
To  walk  with  memory,  when  distant  lies 
Poor  Earth,  where  we  were  wont  to  live  and  grieve. 

William  Allingham^ 

■  Select  British  Poets,  or  New  Elegant  Extracts,  from  Chaucer  to  the  Present 
Time,  vuith  Critical  Remarks.  By  William  Hazlitt.  Lond.,  1824.  This  work,  the 
original  issn^  of  Hazlitt's  Select  Poets  of  Great  Britain,  1825,  is  among  the  rarest  of 
modern  books,  having  been  rigidly  suppressed  on  publication.  The  latter,  ending  with 
Burns,  was  simply  a  reissue  of  the  earlier  portion  of  the  former,  which,  in  addition  to 
the  portion  so  reissued,  contains  copious  extracts  from  and  sententious  criticisms  on 
Rogers,  Campbell,  Bloomfield,  Crabbe,  Coleridge, Wordsworth,  Southey,  Scott,  Lamb, 
Montgomery,  Byron,  INIoore,  Leigh  Hunt,  Shelley,  Lord  Thurlow,  Keats,  Milman, 
Bowles,  and  Barry  Cornwall.  These  criticisms  by  Hazlitt  have  since  been  reprinted  in 
his  son's  valuable  edition  oi  jfohnson's  Lives  of  the  British  Poets  (1854).  Lamb,  by 
whom  the  sheets  of  the  original  work  were  seen  through  the  press,  receives  this  notice: 
'  Mr.  C.  Lamb  has  produced  no  poems  equal  to  his  prose  writings  :  but  I  could  not 
resist  the  temptation  of  transferring  into  this  collection  h\9,  Farezvell  to  Tobacco,  and 
some  of  the  sketches  in  his  John  Woodvil ;  the  first  of  which  is  rarely  surpassed  in 
quaint  wit,  and  the  last  in  pure  feeling.'  And  Keats  this  :  '  Mr.  Keats  is  also  dead.  He 
g.-»ve  the  greatest  promise  of  genius  of  any  poet  of  his  day.  He  displayed  extreme  ten- 
derness,beauty,originality  and  delicacy  offancy;  all  he  wanted  was  manly  strength  and 
fortitude  to  reject  the  temptations  of  singularity  in  sentiment  and  e.xpression.  Some  of 
his  shorter  and  later  pieces  are,  however,  as  free  from  faults  as  they  are  full  of  beauties.' 

*  L.  8.  Cp.  Wordsworth  (cxciii,  p.  99)  : 

'  the  instinctive  joys  of  song. 
And  nobler  cares  than  listless  summer  knew.' 


Notes  409 

PAGE 

The  sonnet  in  the  text  is  one  of  four  on  the  seasons,  of  which  I 

subjoin  that  on 

WINTER. 

This  is  the  eldest  of  the  seasons  :  he  ! 

Moves  not,  like  Spring,  with  gradual  step,  nor  grows  I 

From  bud  to  beauty  ;  but  with  all  his  snows  1 

Comes  down  at  once  in  hoar  antiquity.  , 

No  rains,  nor  loud  proclaiming  tempests  flee 

Before  him  ;  nor  unto  his  time  belong  i 

The  suns  of  Summer,  nor  the  charms  of  song, 

That  with  May's  gentle  smiles  so  well  agree. 

But  he,  made  perfect  in  his  birth-day  cloud, 

Starts  into  sudden  life  with  scarce  a  sound,  j 

And  with  a  gentle  footstep  prints  the  ground,  •  \ 

As  tho'  to  cheat  man's  ear  ;  yet  while  he  stays,  | 

He  seems  as  'twere  to  prompt  our  merriest  days,  | 

And  bid  the  dance  and  joke  be  long  and  loud.'  j 

137 — CCLXIX.  Yxoviv  Dramatic  Scenes  and  Other  Poems  :  i8ig.  j 

CCLXX.  From  The  Flood  of  Thessaly,  The  Girl  of  Provence,  and  I 

Other  Poems  :  1823.  1 

138 — CCLXXi.  Yrom.  English  Songs  and  Other  Small  Poems  :  1832.  : 

^£rra  I^DSsIjc  S'ljcllcw.  '• 

CCLXXII.  From  Rosalind  and  Helen,  a  Modem  Eclogue ;  with 
Other  Poems  :  1 8 19.     In  the  Life,  Letters,  and  Literary  Remains  , 

of  John  Keats,  edited  by  Lord  Houghton  (1848,  i,  98),  there  is  a  I 

letter  from  Keats  to  his  brothers,  dated  Feb.  16,  [181S],  in  which  he  j 

says :  '  The  Wednesday  before  last,  Shelley,  Hunt,  and  I,  wrote  '. 

each  a  sonnet  on  the  river  Nile  :  some  day  you  shall  read  them 
all ; '  and  the  editor  thereupon  gives  the  two  following  sonnets,  and 
Ozymandias,  as  the  three  poems  alluded  to,  remarking  with  truth 
how  very  characteristic  they  are  of  their  respective  authors.  1 

TO  THE  NILE. 
Son  of  the  old  moon-mountains  African  ! 
Stream  of  the -Pyramid  and  Crocodile  ! 
We  call  thee  fruitful,  and  that  very  while 
A  desert  fills  our  seeing's  inward  span  : 

Nurse  of  swart  nations  since  the  world  began,  1 

Art  thou  so  fruitful  ?  or  dost  thou  beguile  ] 

Those  men  to  honour  thee,  who,  worn  with  toil,  | 

Rest  them  a  space  'twixt  Cairo  and  Decan  ?  j 

O  may  dark  fancies  err  !     They  surely  do  ;  , 

'Tis  ignorance  that  makes  a  barren  waste  1 

Of  all  beyond  itself.     Thou  dost  bedew  i 

Green  rushes  like  our  rivers,  and  dost  taste  j 


1  Cp.  Barapfylde's  sonnet '  On  Christmas '  {ante,  p.  393). 


4IO  Notes 

The  pleasant  sun-rise.     Green  isles  hast  thou  too, 
And  to  the  sea  as  happily  dost  haste. 

John  Keats. 

I  print  Hunt's  as  in  his  own  Foliage,  1818,  (p.  cxxxiv)  : 

THE  NILE. 
It  flows  through  old  hushed  ^gypt  and  its  sands, 
Like  some  grave  mighty  thought  threading  a  dream, 
And  times  and  things,  as  in  that  vision,  seem 
Keeping  along  it  their  eternal  stands, — 
Caves,  pillars,  pyramids,  the  shepherd  bands 
That  roamed  tlirough  the  young  world,  the  glory  extreme 
Of  high  Sesostris,  and  that  southern  beam, 
The  laughing  queen  that  caught  the  world's  great  hands. 
Then  comes  a  mightier  silence,  stern  and  strong, 
As  of  a  world  left  empty  of  its  throng, 
And  the  void  weighs  on  us ;  and  then  we  wake, 
And  hear  the  fruitful  stream  lapsing  along 
'Twixt  villages,  and  think  how  we  shall  take 
Our  own  calm  journey  on  for  human  sake. 

Leigh  Hunt. 
Now  the  authority  for  this  account  being  of  so  unimpeachable  a 
character,  no  one  ever  suspected  its  accuracy  ;  though  at  the  same 
time  many  must  have  remarked  it  as  singular  that  Shelly  did  not 
keep  closer  to  the  subject  proposed.  It  appears,  however,  that 
Lord  Houghton  must  have  been  misinformed,  or  guessing,  when 
he  gave  Ozymandias  as  Shelley's  contribution  ;  for  in  the  Aldine 
edition  of  Keats  recently  edited  by  his  lordship  (1876),  another  and 
very  different  sonnet  is  substituted,  with  the  remark  subjoined  : 
'  Up  to  the  discovery  of  this  sonnet  among  Shelley's  MSS.,  in  the 
possession  of  Mr.  Townshend  Mayer,  the  sonnet  entitled  Ozyman- 
dias was  believed  to  be  that  written  in  competition  with  Keats.' 
For  details  of  this  interesting  discovery  I  refer  the  reader  to  Mr. 
Mayer's  own  account  in  the  March  and  April  issues  of  St.  James's 
Magazi7te,  1876  ;  and,  for  a  facsimile  of  the  recovered  sonnet,  which 
internal  and  external  proofs  unite  in  identifying  as  the  one  pro- 
duced by  Shelley  on  the  occasion  mentioned  in  Keats's  letter,  to 
Mr.   Forman's  edition  of   Shelley,    from  which  it  is  here  given 

(iii,  411)  : 

TO  THE  NILE. 

Month  after  month  the  gathered  rains  descend 

Drenching  yon  secret  ^tliiopian  dells, 

And  from  the  desart's  ice-girt  pinnacles 

Where  Frost  and  Heat  in  strange  embraces  blend 

On  Atlas,  fields  of  moist  snow  half  depend. 

Girt  there  with  blasts  and  meteors  Tempest  dwells 

By  Nile's  aerial  urn,  with  rapid  spells 

Urging  those  waters  to  their  mighty  end. 


Notes  411 

O'er  Egypt's  land  of  Memory  floods  are  level 
And  they  are  thine  O  Nile — and  well  thou  knowest 
That  soul-sustaining  airs  and  blasts  of  evil 
And  fruits  and  poisons  spring  where'er  thou  flowest. 
Beware  O  man — for  knowledge  must  to  thee 
Like  the  great  flood  to  Egypt  ever  be.' 

With  those  of  Shelley,  Keats,  and  Hunt,  as  above,  read  two  Nile 
sonnets  by  Chauncy  Hare  Townshend  (^Sermons  in  Sonnets,  185 1, 
p.  310) ;  while  with  Ozymandias,  which  was  printed  originally  over 
the  signature  '  Glirastes  '  in  The  Examiner  of  11  Jan.,  1818,  may 
be  compared,  or  contrasted  rather,  one  on  the  same  subject  by  his 
friend  Horace  Smith  (Amarynthus  the  Nympholcpt,  Sec,  1821,  p. 
213),  which  made  its  appearance  in  the  same  paper  shortly  after 
Shelley's  (l  Feb.),  with  a  brief  note  by  Smith  which  conveys  the 
impression  that  these  also,  like  the  Nile  sonnets,  had  been  written 
in  concert.  This  confirms,  while  it  also  partly  invalidates,  Mr. 
Forman's  conjectures  on  this  subject.  (See  his  '  Shelley,'  iii,  410). 
I  add  another  of  Shelley's  early  sonnets,  which  should,  be  com- 
pared with  Mr.  Browning's  noble  dramatic  lyric  The  Lost  Leader^ 
both  poems  having  been  evoked  more  or  less  directly  by  Words- 
worth's defection  from  the  Republican  cause.  {Alastor;  or.  The 
Spirit  of  Solitude  :  and  Other  Poems.  18 16,  p.  67): 
TO  irORDSirOKTH. 

Poet  of  Nature,  thou  hast  wept  to  know 

That  things  depart  which  never  may  return  : 

Childhood  and  youth,  friendship  and  love's  first  glow, 

Have  fled  like  sweet  dreams,  leaving  thee  to  mourn. 

These  common  woes  I  feel.     One  loss  is  mine 

Which  thou  too  feel'st,  yet  I  alone  deplore. 

Thou  wert  as  a  lone  star,  whose  light  did  shine 

On  some  frail  bark  in  winter's  midnight  roar  : 

Thou  hast  like  to  a  rock-built  refuge  stood 

Above  the  blind  and  battling  multitude  : 

In  honoured  poverty  thy  voice  did  weave 

Songs  consecrate  to  truth  and  liberty, — 

Deserting  these,  thou  leavest  me  to  grieve. 

Thus  having  been,  that  thou  shouldst  cease  to  be.' 

•  LI.  13-14.  Mr.  Forman  notes  th^  reminiscence  of  Shelley's  work  of  the  previous 
summer  :  Laon  and  Cythna,  vi,  40-41. 

''■  For  the  precise  extent  to  which  we  are  warranted  in  identifying  Wordsworth  with 
the  '  Lost  Leader,'  see  Mr.  Browning's  letter  to  Dr.  Grosa-t,  printed  in  Wordsworth's 
Prose  Works,  i,  p.  xxxvii. 

3  With  1.  7  op.  Wordsworth's  own  sonnet,  ante,  p.  107,  ccx,  g  ;  and  with  1.  10  11. 
■  3-4  of  E.  Myers's  sonnet  on  Milton,  given  under  it  (p.  381).     Ll.  13-14.     It  was  to 

Wordsworth  that  Leigh  Hunt  allude^  in  his  sonnet.  To ,  M.D.     On  his  giving 

me  a  lock  of  Milton^ s  luiir,  as  it  originally  stood  in  Foliage  (p.  cxxxi). 

'  (For  there  is  one,  whom  had  he  kept  his  art 
For  Freedom  still,  nor  left  her  for  the  crew 
Of  lucky  slaves  in  his  misgiving  heart, 
I  would  have  begged  thy  leave  to  give  it  to).' 


412  Notes 

^ertg  ^nsslje  SIkHcit. 

PACE 

139-141 — CCLXXIII-CCLXXVII.  From  Prometheus  Unbound,  a  Lytical 
Dra77ia  ;  tuith  Other  Poems  :  1820.  '  This  poem  was  conceived  and 
chiefly  written  in  a  wood  that  skirts  the  Arno,  near  Florence,  and 
on  a  day  when  that  tempestuous  wind,  whose  temperature  is  at  once 
mild  and  animating,  was  collecting  the  vapours  which  pour  down 
the  autumnal  rains.  They  began,  as  I  foresaw,  at  sunset  with  a 
violent  tempest  of  hail  and  rain,  attended  by  that  magnificent 
thunder  and  lightning  peculiar  to  the  Cisalpine  regions.  The  pheno- 
menon alluded  to  at  the  conclusion  of  the  third  stanza  is  well  known 
to  naturalists.  The  vegetation  at  the  bottom  of  the  sea,  of  rivers, 
and  of  lakes,  sympathises  with  that  of  the  land  in  the  change  of  sea- 
sons, and  is  consequently  influenced  by  the  winds  which  announce 
it.' — P.  B.  S.  The  reader  may  desire  to  know  the  grounds  on  which 
Shelley's  well-known  Ode  has  been  included  in  a  collection  of  Son- 
nets. A  very  brief  examination  will  show  that  it  is  really  made  up 
of  five  exquisitepoems  in  the  English  or  Shakspearian  sonnet-stanza, 
each  having  that  single-thoughted  character  which  is  necessary  to 
the  true  idea  of  the  sonnet ;  while  the  metrical  conditions  are  suffi- 
ciently fulfilled  by  the  application  of  the  principle  on  which  Cole- 
ridge maintained  the  regularity  of  the  metre  of  Christabel :  that, 
namely,  of  counting  in  each  line  the  accents,  not  the  syllables. 

141— CCLXXVIII,  3.  ' "  Shepherd^,"  in  lieu  of  "shepherds,"  is  a  grammati- 
cal laxity  which  Shelley  probably  fell  into  without  reflecting  about  it: 
but  which,  had  he  reflected,  he  would  perhaps  have  retained,  rather 
than  incur  the  cacophony  of  "  shepherds  "  and  "herds  "  in  the  same 
line.' —  IV.  Af.  Rossetti.  LI.  g-io.  Wordsworth's  favourite  argument: 
see  his  sonnet  beginning  '  The  power  of  Armies,'  with  remark,  ante, 
p.  383.  9-14.  Shelley  seems  to  have  had  Samuel  Daniel  in  his 
thoughts  here  (.4  Pane^mke  Congratulatofie,  &c.,  1603,  sig.  D3) : 

'  Knowing  the  hart  of  man  is  set  to  be 
The  centre  of  his  world,  about  the  which 
These  revolutions  of  disturbances 
Still  roule,  where  all  th'  aspects  of  misery 
Predominate,  whose  strong  effects  are  such 
As  he  must  beare,  being  powrelesse  to  redresse, 
And  that  unlesse  above  himselfe  he  can 
Erect  himselfe,  how  poore  a  thing  is  man.' ' 

141-142 — CCLXXVIII-CCLXXIX.   From  the  Posthumous  Poems  :  1824. 

Shelley's  snnnet  should  be  compared  with  anotlier  of  his  own,  a  translation  of  Guido 
Cavalcanti's  to  Dante  Alighieri,  found  among  Mr.  TownshencI  Mayer's  Hunt  papers, 
and  printed  for  the  first  time  in  Mr.  Forman's  '  Shelley  '  (iv,  248). 

1  Cp.  Ben  Jonson  earlier  {Cynthia's  Reriels,  i6oo,  i,  5  :  Workes,  1616,  p.  196)  : 
'  O  how  despisde  and  base  a  thing  is  a  man, 
If  he  not  strive  t'  erect  his  groveling  thoughts 
Above  the  straine  of  flesh  ! ' 


Notes  413 

Cbfeavb  Irdhrg. 

PAGE 

142 — CCLXXX.  From  his  Exposition  of  the  Book  of  Revelation,  in  a  Series 
of  Lectures  :  1831,  i,  193,  as  corrected  on  p.  28S.  Introducing  the 
little  group  of  sonnets  to  which  this  belongs,  Irving  says  :  '  In  the 
writing  of  these  Lectures  I  have  felt  my  soul  at  times  so  stirred  with 
the  sublimity  of  the  subject,  as  to  long  for  other  forms  of  expression 
than  those  which  are  proper  to  exact  and  rigid  exposition  :  and 
though  I  find  it  to  have  been  customary  with  the  best  of  our  divines 
to  intersperse  their  prose  with  poetical  utterances,  I  rather  prefer  to 
keep  those  emotions  of  my  soul,  and  present  them,  apart ;  lest  I 
should  lose  at  any  time  that  perfect  controul  of  the  mind  which  is 
proper  to  an  interpreter  of  Prophecy.  I  am  no  poet,  and  have 
never  studied  the  laws  of  poetry  ;  but  I  do  desire  devoutly  to  express 
those  harmonious  moods  of  my  spirit,  with  which  God  doth  visit 
me,  in  harmonious  numbers.' 

|o^n  Jicblt. 

143 — CCLXXXi.  Dated  'Sunday,  Oct.  20,  1816.' 

CCLXXXII.  ,,  '  August,  1817.  "  The  original  MS.  is  on  a  half- 
sheet  of  foolscap  paper,  folded,  with  a  piece  of  dried  wall-rue  in  it, 
no  doubt  gathered  on  the  spot.' — G.  M. 

144 — CCLXXXIII.  Dated  'April,  1820.'  These  examples  are  given 
from  Keble's  Miscellaneous  Poems,  1869.  [Edited  by  '  G.  M.'  = 
G.  Moberly.] 

|oI)it  Clare. 

CCLXXXiv.  From  The  Village  Minstrel,  and  Other  Poems  :  1821. 

145 — CCLXXXVI.   benty  =  composed  of  bent,  a  coarse  grass. 

147 — CCLXXXIX.  deckt.     Clare  has  '  drest,'  an  obvious  slip. 

148 — ccxcil.  pooty-shells  =  girdled  snail-shells.  In  this  sonnet,  as  else- 
where throughout  his  latest  and  best  work — truly  '  the  fine  handy- 
worke  of  excellent  nature  and  excellenter  arte  combined,'  in  an  old 
critic's  words — Clare  seems  to  be  the  echo,  not  of  Wordsworth  so 
much,  as  of  that  ablest  and  sweetest-voiced  of  Wordsworth's  disci- 
ples, Henry  Ellison  ;  who,  although  nearly  half  a  century  has  elapsed 
since  he  addressed  his  Madmoments  to  '  the  lightheaded  of  society  at 
large,' '  is  still  among  us,  the  living  witness  of  much  of  the  human 

1  Madmoments,  or  First  Verseattempts  by  a  Bornnatural.  Addressed  respectfully 
to  the  lightheaded  of  society  at  large  :  but  intended  more  particularly/or  the  use  of 
that  Worldsmadhouse,  London,  by  Henry  Ellison,  of  Christchurch,  Oxford.  2  Vols. 
Malta  :  1833.  His  later  works  in  verse  are,  Touches  on  the  Harp  of  Nature  (1839), 
The  Poetry  of  Real  Life  (1844),  and  a  pseudonymous  one  of  which  I  am  unable  to  give 
the  title. 


414  Notes 

PAGE 

progress  he  so  bravely  advocated  both  in  his  prose  and  his  verse. 

Why  is  the  Harp  of  Nature  silent  ?     It  must  have  yet  many  strings 

'  Untouched,  that  God  intended  Man  to  hear.' 

Mr.  Ellison's  little  books,  especially  the  earliest,  named  above,  are 

now  among  bibliographical  rareties  ;  yet,  as  the  beloved  author  of 

Rab  and  his  Friends  said  of  them  many  years  ago,  notwithstanding 

the  eccentricities  and  whimsicalities  with  which  they  abound,  they 

are  as  '  full  of  poetry  as  is  an  "  impassioned  grape  "of  its  noble  liquor. ' 

Much  of  that  poetiy  is  cast  in  sonnet-form  ;  and  as  the  poem  which 

Clare's  brought  to  my  memory  happens  to  be  a  sonnet,  and  a  most 

lovely  one,  I  give  it  here.     It  answers  to  his  own  stirring  words 

{On  hearittg  an  Eld-time  Song)  : 

'  And  ever  as  that  note  I  hear, 

My  soul  with  its  far  echoes  shakes  ; 
It  strikes  not  on  the  clay-coarse  ear, 
But  a  far  deeper  sense  awakes.' 

{Aladmoments,  1833,  i,  102): 

r//E    DAYS  EYE. 
Sweet  flower,  thou  art  a  link  of  memory. 
An  emblem  to  the  heart  of  bright  days  flown  ; 
And  in  thy  silence  too  there  is  a  tone 
That  stirs  the  inmost  soul,  more  potently 
Than  if  a  trumpet's-voice  had  rent  the  sky  ! 
I  love  thee  much,  for  when  I  stray  alone. 
Stealing  from  Nature  her  calm  thoughts,  which  own 
No  self-disturbance,  and  my  curious'  eye 
Catches  thy  magic  glance,  methinks  a  spell 
Has  touched  my  soul  ;  once  more  I  grow  a  boy  ; 
Once  more  my  thoughts,  that,  as  a  passing-bell, 
Seemed  to  toll  o'er  departed  shapes  of  joy. 
Change  to  old  chimes,  and  in  my  bosom  swell 
Fresh  pulses  of  a  bliss  without  alloy. 

Henry  Ellison} 

149 — CCXClli.  joyous.  This  was  Clare's  first  word  {Friendship's  Offering 
for  1833),  and  seems  preferable  on  the  whole  to  'luscious'  (1835), 
which,  it  will  be  observed,  recurs  (1.  11). 

145-149 — ccLXXXV-ccxciii.  From  The  Rural  Muse,  Poems  :  1835. 

JftlttiE  ^oi'otljfit  Ijtmans. 
149-150 — ccxciv-ccxcvi.  Yxom  Scenes  and  Hymns  of  Life  J  -with  Other 
Religious  Foetns  :  1834. 

'  LI.  7-8.  A  recollection  of  Wordsworth's  sonnet  beginning '  The  stars  are  mansions  ' 
of  which  the  concluding  line  is — 

'  Abodes  where  self-disturbance  hath  no  part.' 


Notes 


415 


151 — CCXCVII.  This  sonnet  should  be  compared  with.W.  C.  Bryant's 
fine  stanzas  To  a  IVaterfozvl,  which  conclude — 

'  He  who,  from  zone  to  zone, 
Guides  through  the  boundless  sky  thy  certain  flight. 
In  the  long  way  that  I  must  tread  alone, 
Will  lead  my  steps  aright.' 

CCXCVIII.  Composed  by  the  authoress,  April  26th,  1835,  a  few 
days  before  her  death,  and  dictated  to  her  brother.  This  and  the 
previous  sonnet  belong  to  the  series  entitled  '  Thoughts  during  Sick- 
ness,' and  are  given  from  the  last  volume  of  The  Works  of  Mrs. 
Hemans  ;  with  a  Memoir  of  her  Life  by  her  Sister  (7  vols.)  :   1839. 

loIjiT  lirats. 

152 — CCXCIX.  This  sonnet — Keats's  first  published  verse  {Examiner, 
5  May,  1816) — and  even  the  other  on  the  same  page  with  it,  seem 
to  have  taken  their  tone  from  one  by  an  obscure  provincial  poet 
who  died  in  1789,  which  it  is  probable  that  Keats  had  read.  I 
extract  it  from  Freeman's  Kentish  Poets,  1821,  ii,  403  (which  see 
for  an  account  of  the  author) : 

ON  SOLITUDE. 

Let  the  lone  hermit  praise  the  darkling  dell 

O'erhung  with  pine,  with  foliage  thick  embrown'd, 

The  bosky  bourn,  cool  grot,  and  cave  profound, 

Where  solitude  and  silence  ever  dwell. 

Save  where  the  Fairies  weave  their  magic  round, 

Unseen  by  vulgar  eyes,  as  poets  tell  ; 

Or  save,  while  echo's  voice  returns  the  sound, 

Night  listens  to  the  song  of  Philomel. 

But  me  nor  woody  vale  nor  shadowy  pine 

Delights,  unless  to  chear  the  dull  serene, 

Some  jovial  youths  and  merry  maidens  join, 

And  more  than  echo  talks  along  the  green, — 

Unless  that  ever  and  anon,  between 

The  foliage,  peeps  'the  human  face  divine.' 

William  Jackson} 

153 — CCCI.  Lord  Houghton,  remarking  on  Keats's  sonnets  {Life,  Letters, 
and  Literal-)'  Remains  of  John  Keats,  1848,  i,  18),  says  :  'They  are 
as  noble  in  thought,  rich  in  expression,  and  harmonious  in  rhythm 
as  any  in  the  language,  and  among  the  best  may  be  ranked  that 
"  On  first  looking  into  Chapman's  Homer."  Unable  as  he  was  to 
read  the  original  Greek,  Homer  had  as  yet  been  to  him  a  name  of 
solemn  significance,  and  nothing  more.     His  friend  and  literary 

1  L.  12.  '  And  more  thnn  echoes  talk  along  the  walls.' — Pope's  Eloisa  to  Abelard, 
306.     14.  Milton,  Paradise  Lost,  iii,  44. 


41 6  Notes 

|obit  Jlrats. 

counsellor,  Mr.  Clarke,  happened  to  borrow  Chapman's  translation, 
and  having  invited  Keats  to  read  it  with  him  one  evening,  they  con- 
tinued their  study  till  daylight.  He  describes  Keats's  delight  as 
intense,  even  to  shouting  aloud,  as  some  passage  of  especial  energy 
struck  his  imagination.  It  was  fortunate  that  he  was  introduced  to 
that  heroic  company  through  an  interpretation  which  preserves 
so  much  of  the  ancient  simplicity,  and  in  a  metre  that,  after  all 
various  attempts,  including  that  of  the  hexameter,  still  appears  the 
best  adapted,  from  its  pauses  and  its  length,  to  represent  in  English 
the  Greek  epic  verse.  .  .  .  The  Sonnet  in  which  these  his  first  im- 
pressions are  concentrated,  was  left  the  following  day,' — or,  as  in 
the  Aldine  edition,  more  circumstantially — 'at  ten  o'clock  the 
next  morning,  on  Mr.  Clarke's  breakfast-table.' 
Writing  nearly  sixty  years  after  the  event,  Keats's  friend  records 
{Recollections  of  Writers,  &c.,  by  Charles  and  Mary  Cowden  Clarke, 
1878,  p.  130) :  'The  original  which  he  sent  mc  had  the  phrase  [1.  7] — 

Yet  could  I  never  tell  what  men  could  mean  ; 
which  he  said  was  bald,  and  too  simply  wondering.  No  one  could  more 
earnestly  chastise  his  thoughts  than  Keats.'  In  the  first /r/«/^^  version, 
dated  October,  1816  {Examiner,  Dec.  i,  1816),  he  \\s.s  judge  for  'tell', 
in  that  line,  and  'But'  for  Oft  in  1.  5.  LI.  11-12.  Leigh  Hunt  remarks 
{Jmagination  and  Fattcy,  p.  345,  3rd  ed,,  1846) :  '  "  Stared"  has  been 
thought  by  some  too  violent,  but  it  is  precisely  the  word  required  by  the 
occasion.  The  Spaniard  was  too  original  and  ardent  a  man  either  to 
look,  or  to  affect  to  look,  coldly  superior  to  it.  His  "eagle  eyes  "  are 
from  life,  as  may  be  seen  by  Titian's  portrait  of  him.'  (See  also  the 
chapter  on  Keats  in  Hunt's  Lord  Byron  and  Some  of  his  Contemporaries, 
2nd  ed.,  1828,  i,  412).  It  should  be  observed,  however,  as  has  been 
pointed  out  (apparently  by  Mr.  Tennyson)  in  Mr,  Palgrave's  Golden 
Treasury'  (p.  320),  that  history  requires  BalbJa  for  '  Cortez.' 

The  following  sonnet  on  the  pseudo-Chaucerian  tale  of  71u'  Floureand 
the  Leaf e,\\x\\.ien  by  Keats  about  the  same  period  with  that  in  the  text,  but 
not  included  in  his  virgin  volume,  though  inferior  both  in  conception  and 
execution  to  that  on  Chapman's  Homer,  is  hardly  less  interesting  as  a 
memorial  of  Keats's  studies  in  our  elder  literature.  As  Archbishop 
Trench  remarks  of  it  {Dublitt  Afternoon  Lectures,  as  before) :  '  It  is  more 
of  an  impromptu  than  that  other,  and  wants  something  of  its  finished 
stateliness  ;  but  Chaucer  himself  would  have  read  it  with  delight ;  above 
all,  the  exquisite  allusion  to  the  Babes  in  the  Wood  with  which  it  con- 
cludes.' This  dainty  sonnet,  which  was  first  printed  in  Leigh  Hunt's 
Examiner,  16  March,  1817,  I  transcribe  from  the  poet's  own  MS. 


Notes  417 

This  pleasant  Tale  is  like  a  little  copse  : 
The  honied  Lines  do  freshly  interlace 
To  keep  the  Reader  in  so  sweet  a  place, 
So  that  he  here  and  there  full-hearted  stops ; 
And  oftentimes  he  feels  the  dewy  drops 
Come  cool  and  suddenly  against  his  face, 
And  by  the  wandring  Melody  may  trace 
Which  way  the  tender-legged  Linnet  hops — 

0  what  a  Power  hath  white  Simplicity  ! 
What  mighty  Power  has  this  gentle  Story  ! 

1  that  for  ever  feel  athirst  for  glory 
Could  at  this  moment  be  content  to  lie 
Meekly  upon  the  Grass,  as  those  whose  sobbings 
Were  heard  of  None  beside  the  mournful  Robins. 

J.  K.  Feby  1817.- 

Mr.  Clarke  thus  tells  the  pretty  story  in  his  Riches  of  Chaucer,  1835,  i, 
52  :  '  The  poem  of  the  "  Flower  and  the  Leaf  "  was  especially  favoured 
by  the  young  poet,  John  Keats.  The  author  may  perhaps  be  pardoned 
for  making  a  short  digression  upon  the  present  occasion,  to  record  an 
anecdote  in  corroboration  of  the  pleasure  testified  by  that  vivid  intellect 
upon  his  first  perasal  of  the  composition.  It  happened  at  the  period 
when  Keats  was  about  publishing  his  first  little  volume  of  poems  (in  the 
year  1817) ;  he  was  then  living  in  the  second  floor  of  a  house  in  the 
Poultry,  at  the  corner  of  the  court  leading  to  the  Queen's  Arms  tavern — 
the  corner  nearest  to  Bow  church.  The  author  had  called  upon  him 
here,  and  finding  his  young  friend  engaged,  took  possession  of  a  sofa, 
and  commenced  reading,  from  his  then  pocket-companion,  Chaucer's 
"  Flower  and  the  Leaf."  The  fatigue  ot  a  long  walk,  however,  pre- 
vailed over  the  fascination  of  the  verses,  and  he  fell  asleep.  Upon 
awaking,  the  book  was  still  at  his  side  ;  but  the  reader  may  conceive  the 
author's  delight  upon  finding  the  following  elegant  sonnet  written  in  his 
book  at  the  close  of  the  poem.  During  my  sleep,  Keats  had  read  it  for 
the  first  time  ;  and,  knowing  that  it  would  gratify  me,  had  subjoined  a 
testimony  to  its  merit,  that  might  have  delighted  Chaucer  himself.'  In 
the  later  Recollections,  Mr.  Clarke  records  further  that,  at  his  request, 
Keats  '  retraced  the  poem,  confirming  and  denoting  with  his  pen  those 

'  L.  9,  Keats's  friend,  J.   H.   Reynolds,  in  one  of  his  sonnets  (7-4s  Garden  of 

Florence,  &c.,  1821,  p.  132),  has 

'  But  white  Simplicity  doth  lead  with  care.' 
Drummond  loved  the  epithet  (Poems,  p.  40,  folio  1711)  : 

'  Men's  Sp'rits  with  white  Simplicity  indue  ; ' 
and  again  ('  An  Hymn  on  the  Fairest  Fair,'  ibid.,  p.  30)  : 

'Simplicity,  more  white  than  Gelsomine.' 

13-14.  Perhaps  it  was  the  authority  of  Wordsworth  that  tempted  Keats  into  this  un- 
fortunate double  rime  :  '  'I'he  Redbreast  and  the  Butterfly  '  (Poems,  1807,  i,  i6) ; 

'Our  little  English  Robin  ; 
The  Bird  that  comes  about  our  doors 
When  Autumn  winds  are  sobbing.' 
BB 


41 8  Notes 

passages  which  were  congenial  with  his  own  feeling  and  judgment  ; '  and 
adds  :  '  These  two  circumstances,  associated  with  the  literary  career  of 
this  cherished  object  of  his  friend's  esteem  and  love,  have  stamped  a 
priceless  value  upon  that  friend's  miniature  i8mo.  copy  of  Chaucer.'  It 
may  interest  the  lovers  of  Keats  to  know  that  the  edition  of  Chaucer  in 
question  was  that  'printed  by  the  Martins  at  the  Apollo  Press,'  Edin- 
burgh, 14  vols,  (in  7),  1782.  The  sonnet,  or,  more  precisely,  the  firsf 
twelve  lines  of  it,  written  in  a  neat  and  clear  hand,  and  without  the 
alteration  of  a  single  word,  occupies  the  blank  space  at  the  end  of  The 
Floure  and  the  Leafe  on  page  104  of  volume  xii  ;  the  closing  couplet, 
with  initials  and  date,  being  carried  to  the  margin  at  foot  of  page  105 
opposite,  OH  which  The  Court  of  Love  begins.  This  precious  relic  has 
fit  keeping  in  the  hands  of  Mr.  Alexander  Ireland,  of  Manchester,  the 
bibliographer  of  Hazlitt  and  Hunt,*  to  whom  it  was  bequeathed  by  Mr. 
Clarke  at  his  death,  which  took  place  at  Genoa,  13th  March,  1877,  in 
his  ninetieth  year.  As  might  be  expected  of  one  who  passed  all  his 
days  in  a  musical  atmosphere — 

'  In  harmony  I've  lived  ; — so  let  me  die  ' — 
Charles  Cowden  Clarke  occasionally  threw  off  the  yoke  of  prose.  Among 
his  Carmina  Minima  {i859),modestly  mottoed  from  his  beloved  Chaucer 
as  but  '  Motes  in  the  Sonne  beame,'  are  some  pleasing  lyrics,  including 
several  sonnets — a  form  which  never  ceased  to  be  a  favourite  with  him. 
Indeed  I  believe  the  very  last  bit  of  verse  he  pennedwas  a  sonnet ;  and 
as  that  sonnet  is  perhaps  on  the  whole  his  most  remarkable  one,  I  adopt 
it  as  a  nexus  between  the  two  friends  here, — the  veteran  author  who  has 
but  left  us,  and  the  divine  poet  whom,  seventy  years  before,  he  '  first 
taught  all  the  sweets  of  song,'  and  among  these — 

'  the  Sonnet  swelling  loudly 
Up  to  its  climax  and  then  dying  proudly.' 

Keats' s  Epistle  To  Charles  Cowden  Clarke  :  Poems,  1817,  p.  71, 

{An  Idyl  of  London  Streets,  by  Mary  Cowden  Clarke :  [and]  Sonnet  on 
the  Course  of  Time,  by  Charles  Cowden  Clarke.     Rome  :  1875,  p.  22)  : 

THE  COURSE  OF  TIME. 

No  !  no  arresting  the  vast  wheel  of  time, 
Tliat  round  and  round  still  turns  with  onward  might, 
Stern,  dragging  thousands  to  the  dreaded  night 
Of  an  unknown  hereafter.     Faith  to  climb 

^  List  of  the  Writings  of  William  Hazlitt  and  Leigh  Hunt,  chronologically 
arranged :  with  Notes,  Descriptive,  Critical,  and  Explanatory,  and  a  Selection  of 
Opinions,  regarding  their  Genius  and  Characteristics,  by  distinguished  contem- 
poraries and  friends,  as  well  as  by  subsequent  critics  :  preceded  by  a  Review  of 
a}id  Extracts  from,  Barry  CormualV  s  ''Memorials  of  Charles  Lamb:  '  with  a 
Few  Words  on  William  Hazlitt  and  his  Writings,  and  a  Chronological  List  of 
the  Works  of  Charles  Lamb.    By  Alexander  Ireland.   Privately  printed.  1868. 


Notes  4 1  (J 

PAGE 

In  thought  to  that  supernal  Force  sublime, 
Who  guides  the  circling  of  the  wheel  aright, 
Alone  can  steady  our  dismay  at  sight 
Of  that  huge  radius  imaged  in  my  rhyme. 
Some  swept  resistless  through  a  mire  of  sin, 
Some  carried  smoothly  on  in  downy  ease, 
Some  whirled  to  swift  destruction  'mid  the  din 
And  crash  of  sudden  end  !     Oh,  may  it  please 
The  Guider  merciful  to  will  my  course 
Shall  be  in  peace  and  trust,  devoid  remorse. 

Charles  Cozvden  Clarke.  ' 
153— CCCil.  We  are  indebted  to  Mr.  Clarke  again,  who  relates  how 
during  a  visit  paid  by  Keats  and  himself  to  Leigh  Hunt  at  his  cot- 
tage in  the  Vale  of  Health,  Hampstead  Heath  (December  30,1816), 
the  host  proposed  to  Keats  '  the  challenge  of  writing  then,  there, 
and  to  time,'  a  sonnet  '  On  the  Grasshopper  and  the  Cricket ; '  and 
how  this  and  CCLIV  (p.  129)  were  the  result  of  their  friendly  strife. 
Keats  won  as  to  time.  'But  the  event  of  the  after-scrutiny,'  the 
narrator  continues,  '  was  one  of  many  such  occurrences  which  have 
riveted  the  memory  of  Leigh  Hunt  in  my  affectionate  regard  and 
admiration  for  unaffected  generosity  and  perfectly  unpretentious 
encouragement.     His  sincere  look  of  pleasure  at  the  first  line — 

The  poetry  of  earth  is  never  dead — 
"  Such  a  prosperous  opening  !  "  he  said  ;  and  when  he  came  to  the 
tenth  and  eleventh  lines  : — 

On  a  lone  winter  evening,  when  the  frost 
Has  wrought  a  silence — 

"Ah  !  that's  perfect  !    Bravo,  Keats  ! ''  And  then  he  went  on  in  a 

dilation  upon  the  dumbness  of  Nature  during  the  season's  torpidity. 

With  all  the  kind  and  gratifying  things  that  were  said  to  him, 

Keats  protested  to  me,  as  we  were  afterwards  walking  home,  that 

he  preferred  Hunt's  treatment  to  his  own.' 

1  This  evoked  the  following  beautiful  response  in  sonnet-form  from  a  friend  m 
England,  who  desires  to  remain  anonymous  : 

TO  CHARLES  COW  DEN  CLARKE: 

ON  HIS  SONNET,    '  THE  COURSE  OF   TIME.' 

Amen  !  my  brave  old  friend,  to  all  thy  prayer; 
Amen,  I  say  :  and  may  thy  faith  still  stand 
Serenely  trustful  to  the  Guider's  hand 
Which,  tempering  ruthless  force  with  ruthful  care. 
May  shatter  empires,  yet  each  silver  hair 
Touch  kindly  on  a  brow  where  memories  grand 
Of  genius  clustered  in  thy  dear  old  land 
Make  age  with  youth's  immortal  graces  fair.  - 
O  happy  he  who,  ere  his  prayer  be  spoken. 
For  answer  sweet  finds  ever  at  his  side 
A  loving  wife,  Heaven's  best  and  purest  token 
Of  purposed  good,  whatever  may  betide. 
So  stands  thy  Mary,  '  peace  and  trust'  unbroken 
By  Time's  dread  wheel, — thy  own  perennial  Bride  ! 
April,  1876.  y.M. 


42  o  Notes 

Icljit  Juats. 

PAGE 

152-154 — ccxcix-ccciii.  To  these  specimens  from  Keats's  first  volume 
{Poems,  by  John  Keats  :  1817  ')  may  be  added,  tlie  Dedication  to 
Leigh  Hunt,  and  the  sonnet  to  another  friend,  Wells,  author  of 
Joseph  atid  his  Brethren. 

TO  LEIGH  HUNT,  ESQ. 
Glory  and  loveliness  have  passed  away  ; 
For  if  we  wander  out  in  early  morn, 
No  wreathed  incense  do  we  see  upborne 
Into  the  east,  to  meet  the  smiling  day  : 
No  crowd  of  nymphs  soft-voic'd  and  young  and  gay. 
In  woven  baskets  bringing  ears  of  corn, 
Roses,  and  pinks,  and  violets,  to  adorn 
The  shrine  of  Flora  in  her  early  May. 
But  there  are  left  delights  as  high  as  these  ; 
And  I  shall  ever  bless  my  destiny, 
That  in  a  time,  when  under  pleasant  trees 
Pan  is  no  longer  sought,  I  feel  a  free, 
A  leafy  luxury,  seeing  I  could  please 
With  these  poor  offerings,  a  man  like  thee.* 
{Poems,  1817,  p.  83)  : 

TO  A  FRIEND  WHO  SENT  ME  SOME  ROSES. 
As  late  I  rambled  in  the  happy  fields. 
What  time  the  sky-lark  shakes  the  tremulous  dew 
From  his  lush  clover  covert  ; — when  anew 
Adventurous  knights  take  up  their  dinted  shields  ; 
I  saw  the  sweetest  flower  wild  nature  yields, 
A  fresh-blown  musk-rose  ;  'twas  the  first  that  threw 
Its  sweets  upon  the  summer  :  graceful  it  grew 
As  is  the  wand  that  queen  Titania  wields. 
And,  as  I  feasted  on  its  fragrancy, 
I  thouglit  the  garden-rose  it  far  excell'd  ; 
But  when,  O  Wells  !  thy  roses  came  to  me 
My  sense  with  their  deliciousness  was  spell'd  : 
Soft  voices  had  they,  that  with  tender  plea 
Whisper'd  of  peace,  and  truth,  and  friendliness  unquell'd.^ 

'  On  the  fly-leaf  of  a  copy  formerly  belonging  to  Mr.  Locker,  and  now  in  the 
British  Museum,  there  is  this  inscription  :  '  Robert  Browning  dined  with  me  to-day, 
and  looking  at  this  volume  he  said  that  it  was  a  copy  of  this  edition  of  John  Keats' 
Poems  that  was  found  in  the  bosom  of  the  dead  body  of  Shelley. 

F.  Locker,  20  Feb.  i86g.' 

*  '  On  the  evening  when  the  last  proof-sheet  was  brought  from  the  printer,  it  was 
accompanied  by  the  information  that  if  a  "  dedication  to  the  book  was  intended,  it 
must  be  sent  forthwith."  Whereupon  [Keab]  withdrew  to  a  side-table,  and,  in  the 
buzz  of  a  mixed  conversation  (for  there  were  several  friends  in  the  room)  he  com- 
posed and  brought  to  Charles  Oilier,  the  publisher,  the  Dedication  Sonnet  to  Leigh 
Hunt.'— C  C.  Clarke. 

^  Charles  J.  Wells,  author  of  Stories  after  Nature,  and  the  Scriptural  drama  of 
yoseph  and  his  Brethren,  the  former  published  anonymously  in  1822,  and  the  latter 
issued  under  the  pseudonym  of  H.  L.  Howard,  in  1824,  and  reissued  in  his  own  name, 
with  an  introduction  by  Mr.  Swinburne,  in  1876,  was  born  in  1800  and  died  in  1879. 
A  Sonnet  to  Chaucer, hearing  date  1823, contributed  by  Wells  to  Chaucer  Modernized, 
edited  by  his  friend  Mr.  R.  H.  Home  (1841),  seems  to  have  been  written  with  an  eye 


Notes  421 

PAGE 

154 — CCCIV.  This  sonnet,  of  which  I  have  seen  no  earlier  imprint  than 
that  of  the  Paris  edition  of  1829,  was  written  not  later  than  Sep- 
tember, 1818.  With  the  last  portion  of  it  raad  the  following  fine 
sonnet  (Jo  in  Egypt,  and  Other  Poems :  1859,  p.  106) : 

I  will  not  rail,  or  grieve  when  torpid  eld 

Frosts  the  slow-journeying  blood,  for  I  shall  see 

The  lovelier  leaves  hang  yellow  on  the  tree, 

The  nimbler  brooks  in  icy  fetters  held. 

Methinks  the  aged  eye  that  first  beheld 

The  fitful  ravage  of  December  wild. 

Then  knew  himself  indeed  dear  Nature's  child, 

Seeing  the  common  doom,  that  all  compell'd. 

No  kindred  we  to  her  beloved  broods. 

If,  dying  these,  we  drew  a  selfish  breath  ; 

But  one  path  travel  all  her  multitudes, 

And  none  dispute  the  solemn  Voice  that  saith  : 

'  Sun  to  thy  setting  ;  to  your  autumn,  woods  ; 

Stream  to  thy  sea  :  and  man  unto  thy  death  ! ' 

Richard  Gamett, 

155 — CCCV.  During  the  summer  of  18 18,  Keats  and  his  friend  Charles 
A.  Brown,  author  of  the  work  on  Shakspeare's  Sonnets  referred  to 
ante,  p.  279),  made  a  tour  in  Scotland,  of  which  this  sonnet,  which 
I  take  from  the  Paris  edition  of  the  Poetical  Work^  (1829),  is  a 
memorial.  It  was  written,  says  Lord  Houghton,  at  the  Inn  at 
Girvan,  Ayrshire.  It  is  not  uninteresting  to  compare  Keats's  impres- 
sion of  Ailsa  Craig  with  that  of  a  native  poet,  John  Wilson,  writing 
fifty  years  earlier  (C/j'd'i?.- a /'^d';;/,  1764  :  ed.  J.  Leyden,  1803,  Pt.  II, 

575)  •  '  See  towering  Ailsa  o'er  the  waters  rise  ; 

Beneath  the  seas  his  deep  foundation  lies  : 
Hoarse  round  his  rugged  roots  the  ocean  roars. 
And  high  above  the  clouds  his  summit  soars  : 
White  wreaths  of  mist  o'er  his  huge  sho'dders  hang  ; 
Round  his  strong  sides  unnumbered  sea-fowls  clang  ; 
The  royal  falcon,  and  the  bird  of  Jove, 
Dare  only  scale  the  steep,  and  spread  their  wings  above.' 

CCCVI.  Written  late  in  1S17.  L.  8.  Mr.  '?yT^t^(!{\ng(Bacon's  Works, 
vi,  1858,  p.  479)  quotes  these  words  with  their  context  as  showing 
that  Keats  seems  to  have  felt  to  be  true  likewise  of  Poetry  what 
Lord  Bacon  affinns  respecting  Painting  and  Music  (Essayes  :  Of 
Beaut)') :  '  Not  but  I  thinke  a  Painter  may  make  a  better  Face  then 
ever  was  ;  But  he  must  doe  it  by  a  kinde  of  Felicity,^  (As  a  Musician 
that  maketh  an  excellent  Ay  re  in  Musicke)  And  not  by  Rule.' 

to  Keats's  on  Chapman's  Homer,  to  which,  as  needs  hardly  be  said,  it  is  immeasurably 
inferior.  The  burning  words  on  Hazlitt's  tombstone  in  St.  Anne's  churchyard,  Soho, 
were  written  by  Wells. 

1  Or,  as  in  the  posthumous  Latin  text  of  1638  :  Felicitate  quad  am,  et  casu  =  ^  hy 
a  kind  of  felicity  and  chance.'' — Vide  Arber's  Hartnony  0/  Bacons  Essays,  1871. 


42  2  Notes 

lob  IT  lirats. 

PAGE 

156 — CCCVII.  Written  Feb.,  1818,  in  answer  to  a  sonnet  by  his  friend 
John  Hamilton  Reynolds,  ending  thus  ( The  Garden  of  Florence, 
and  Other  Poems.     By  John  Hamilto7i  :  1821,  p.  129) : 

'  dark  eyes  are  dearer  far 
Than  orbs  that  mock  the  hyacinthine-bell.' 

cccvill.  ci7«j-«V«c^=consciousness?  (see  under  Milton,  CLii,  ante, 
p.  350).  L.  10.  Cp.  a  passage  in  one  of  Thomas  Doubleday's  son- 
nets (^Sixty-Five  Sonnets,  &c.,  1818,  p.  27),  not  improbably  seen  by 
Keats,  who  wrote  his  in  1819,  in  which  the  same  effect  of  sleep  is 
invoked  on  his  enemies  : 

'  The  while  thou  mak'st  their  waking  conscience  see 
Crimes  that  the  noise  and  glare  of  day  can  hide.' 

This  exquisite  invocation  cost  its  author  much  '  toil  of  spright ' 

before  it  was  brought  to  its  final  perfection.     (See  an  interesting 

communication  in  The  Athenceum  of  26  Oct.,  1872,  giving  an  early 

autograph  draft  of  the  sonnet  in  facsimile  from  Keats's  copy  of 

Paradise  Lost,^  in  which  he  inscribed  it).     It  should  be  compared 

with  Sidney's  (xxix),  and  those  indicated  under  it  (p.  254) ;  to  which 

add  theVollowing  by  Ireland's  youngest  minstrel  {Songs  ofKillar- 

ney,  1873,  p.  156) : 

SLEEPLESS. 

Pale  Queen,  that  from  thy  bower  Elysian 

In  slow  sweet  state  supremely  issuing  forth. 

Of  thy  dear  pity  to  the  day-worn  man 

Dispenses t  dreams  through  all  the  darkened  earth  ; 

Hast  thou  no  ray  of  softliest-silvered  span. 

To  tempt  coy  Slumber  hither  ?     O,  if  thou  hast, 

By  all  the  love  of  thy  Endymion 

Spare  it,  that  I,  even  I,  may  rest  at  last ! 

Yea,  that  for  me,  sad  Present,  cruel  Past, 

Dark  Future  blend  in  blest  oblivion  ; 

Speed  downy  Slumber  to  these  aching  eyes. 

That  he  with  wings  of  balmiest  breath  may  fan 

My  cares  to  rest,  confuse  each  haunting  plan, 

And  steal  my  spirit  with  a  sweet  surprise. 

Alfred  Perceval  Graves. 

157 — cccix.  In  a  letter  to  his  brother  and  sister  in  America  (May,  1819), 
Keats  introduces  this  sonnet  thus  (Life,  Letters,  &c,  i,  273): '  I  have 
been  endeavouring  to  discover  a  better  Sonnet  stanza  than  we  have. 
The  legitimate  does  not  suit  the  language  well,  from  the  pouncing 

1  This  priceless  relic  contains  also  the  '  Remarks  on  John  Milton,  by  John  Keats, 
written  in  the  fly-leaf  of  Paradise  Lost,'  which  were  published  in  the  American  maga- 
zine 77«(?Z)?a/ (Boston,  1843,  vol.  iii),  at  the  end  of  an  article  on  George  Keats,  signed 
'J.  F.  C  [=Rev.  J.  F.  Clarke). 


Notes  423 


PAGE 


rhymes  ;  the  other  appears  too  elegiac,  and  the  couplet  at  the  end 
of  it  has  seldom  a  pleasing  effect.  I  do  not  pretend  to  have  suc- 
ceeded.    It  will  explain  itself.' 

157 — cccx.   Dated  1819. 

158 — CCCXI.  N'ature's  Eremite  ='  like  a  solitary  thing  in  Nature.' — F, 
T.  Palgrave.  'L.  ix.  swell  and  fall.  So  in  the  facsimile  of  Keats's 
MS.  referred  to  below.  Lord  Houghton  prints  '  fall  and  swell.' 
L.  14.  Aliter : — 

'  Half-passionless,  and  so  swoon  on  to  death.' 
In  September,  1820,  Keats,  accompanied  by  his  friend  the  late  Mr. 
Severn,  set  out  on  the  voyage  to  Italy.   '  It  was  then,'  records  Lord 
Houghton  all  too  briefly  {Life,  &c.,  ii,  72),  '  that  he  composed  that 
sonnet  of  solemn  tenderness — 

*'  Bright  star  !  would  I  were  stedfast  as  thou  art,"  &c., 
and  wrote  it  out  in  a  copy  of  Shakspeare's  Poems  he  had  given  to 
Severn  a  few  days  before.  I  know  of  nothing  written  afterwards.' 
It  first  appeared,  in  facsimile,  in  the  number  for  Februar}',  1846, 
of  a  brief-lived  monthly.  The  Union  Magazine,  accompanied  by 
the  following  deeply  interesting  letter  from  Severn  to  the  editor  : 

'  21,  James  Street,  Jan.  21st,  1846. 
Sir, 

Through  the  medium  of  the  Union  Magazine,  I  have  the  gratifica- 
tion to  present  the  public  with  an  unpublished  MS.  poem  of  Keats', 
(the  last  he  ever  wrote,)  which  I  trust  may  be  admired  and  well  re- 
ceived, as  the  harbinger  of  many  other  unpublished  works  of  the  illus- 
trious young  poet,  now  editing  by  Mr.  R.  Monckton  Milnes. 

The  present  exquisite  Sonnet  was  written  under  such  interesting 
circumstances  that  I  cannot  forbear  making  them  public.  Keats  and 
myself  were  beating  about  in  the  British  Channel  in  the  autumn  of  1820, 
anxiously  waiting  for  a  wind  to  take  us  to  Italy,  which  place,  together 
with  the  sea-voyage,  were  deemed  likely  to  preserve  his  life  ;  for  he  was 
then  in  a  state  of  consumption,  which  left  but  the  single  hope  of  an 
Italian  sojourn  to  save  him.  The  stormy  British  sea,  after  a  fortnight, 
had  exhausted  him  ;  and  on  our  arrival  off  the  Dorsetshire  coast,  hav- 
ing at  last  the  charm  of  a  fine  and  tranquil  day,  we  landed  to  recruit. 

The  shores  with  the  beautiful  grottoes  which  opened  to  fine  verdure 
and  cottages,  were  the  means  of  transporting  Keats  once  more  into  the 
regions  of  poetry; — he  shewed  me  these  things  exultingly,  as  though  they 
had^been  his  birthright.  The  change  in  him  was  wonderful,  and  con- 
tinued even  after  our  return  to  the  ship,  when  he  took  a  volume  (which 
he  had  a  few  days  before  given  me)  of  Shakespeare's  Poems,  and  in  it  he 
wrote  me  the  subjoined  Sonnet,  which  at  the  time  I  thought  the  most 


424 


Notes 


|oljit  JUats. 

enchanting  of  all  his  efforts.  Twenty-five  years  have  passed  away,  and 
I  have  by  degrees  (in  the  love  I  bear  to  his  memory)  placed  it  in  my 
mind  as  amongst  the  most  enchanting  poetry  of  the  world. 

After  writing  this  Sonnet,  Keats  sank  down  into  a  melancholy  state, 
and  never  wrote  again,  save  one  painful  letter  on  the  same  subject  as  the 
Sonnet — for  the  love  so  rapturously  sung  in  it  was  then  hastening  the 
poet's  death  :  it  was  a  real  and  honourable  love,  which,  but  for  the 
separation  occasioned  by  his  direful  illness,  would  have  been  blessed  in 
a  happy  and  advantageous  marriage.  Alas  !  for  Italy — he  only  went 
there  to  die.  I  remain,  Sir, 

Yours  truly, 

Joseph  Severn.' 

'  Do  you  remember  that  last  sonnet  ?  Let  us  repeat  it  solemnly,  and 
let  the  words  wander  down  with  the  waters  of  the  river  to  the  sea  .  .  . 
How  the  star-sheen  on  the  tremulous  tide,  and  that  white  death-like 
"mask,"  haunt  the  imagination  !  Had  the  poet,  who  felt  the  grass  grow 
over  him  ere  he  was  five-and  twenty,  been  crowned  with  a  hundred 
summers,  could  he  have  done  anything  more  consummate?  I  doubt 
\i:—NiigcB  Critica:.     By  'Shirley'  [=John  Skelton]  :  1862,  p.  236. 

'  This  beautiful  Sonnet  was  the  last  word  of  a  poet  deserving  the 
title  "  marvellous  boy  "  in  a  much  higher  sense  than  Chatterton.  If 
the  fulfilment  may  ever  safely  be  prophesied  from  the  promise,  England 
appears  to  have  lost  in  Keats  one  whose  gifts  in  Poetry  have  rarely 
been  surpassed.  Shakespeare,  Milton,  and  Wordsworth,  had  their 
lives  been  closed  at  twenty-five,  would  (so  far  as  we  know)  have  left 
poems  of  less  excellence  and  hope  than  the  youth  who,  from  the  petty 
school  and  the  London  surgery,  passed  at  once  to  a  place  with  them  of 
"high  collateral  glory."' — F.  T.  Palgrave. 

PAGE 

155-158 — cccvi-cccxi.  First  collected  in  the  Life,  Letters,  &c.,  edited 
by  Lord  Houghton  :  2  vols.,  1848. 


aBiHmm  §ibnrn  ©lalkcr. 
cccxii.  From  his  Poetical  Ronains.    Edited,  with  a  Memoir,  by 
the  Rev.  John  Moultrie,  M.A.,  Rector  of  Rugby :   1852. 

(E^Ijonras  l^ooit  Salfomir. 

159 — CCCXIII.  This  noble  sonnet,  evoked  by  the  ignominious  collapse  of 
the  famous  '  Cadiz  Expedition  '  equipped  by, Spain  for  the  recovery 
of  her  transatlantic  possessions  (see  The  Annual  Register  for  1S19 
and  1820,  Ixi,  35,  66,  &c.,  andlxii,  221;  or  The  Gentleman's  Maga- 


Notes  43  r 

PAGE 

zine,  1 8 19,  Pt.  I,  473,  and  Pt.  II,  169),  appeared  over  Talfourd's 
initials  in  John  Thehvall's  paper,  The  Champion,  11  April,  1819, 
and  was  afterwards  reprinted  by  him  in  The  Poetical  Recreations  of 
The  Champion  and  his  Literary  Correspondents  (1822),  from  which 
it  is  here  given.  It  may  be  of  interest  to  compare  it  with  one  which 
Talfourd  addressed  to  the  same  men  nearly  two  years  previously 
{Examiner,  7  Sept.,  1817) : 

TO  THE  SOUTH  AMERICAN  PA  TRIOTS. 
Think  not,  undaunted  Champions  !  that  the  sea 
With  all  its  waves  can  part  us  from  the  cause 
In  which  you  struggle — that  'neath  English  laws 
We  sit  in  cold  and  mute  tranquillity. 
While  Freedom's  Sons  contend  in  'holiest  glee': — 
No  !  the  same  pure  and  uncorrupted  blood 
Beats  in  our  veins  with  yours — and  we  have  stood 
A  sacred  band  in  Earth's  Thermopylje  ! 
E'en  Nature  blends  our  sympathies  from  far, — 
The  ocean  and  the  winds  and  clouds  are  free  ; 
The  golden  courses  of  the  eternal  sun. 
And  the  sweet  moon,  and  every  silent  star — 
All  that  both  Continents  may  look  upon 
Breathe  in  a  gladsome  voice  of  Liberty  ! 

T.  N.  T. 
159 — CCCXiv.  Also  contributed  to  Thehvall's  paper  (15  Sept.,  1821), 
and  reprinted  in  the  Recreations  as  above.  Neither  of  these  son- 
nets— the  former  unquestionably  his  best — has  ever  been  included 
among  Talfourd's  writings,  whether  here  or  in  America. 
160 — CCCXV-CCCXVI.  From  Tragedies  ;  to -which  ai-e  added  a  few  Sonnets 
and  Verses  :  1844.  At  the  end  of  a  copy  of  the  4th  edition  of  /on  : 
to  which  are  added  Sonnets  (1837),  presented  by  Talfourd  to  the  late 
John  Forster,  24  December,  1838,  and  now  in  the  Forster  Collection 
in  the  South  Kensington  Museum,  there  is  an  autograph  transcript 
of  these  two  sonnets  and  the  one  to  Macready,  which  were  then 
unpublished,  showing  numerous  variations  from  the  printed  ver- 
sions. The  sonnet  to  Dickens  is  dated  16  February,  1839,  ^""^^ 
that  to  The  Memory  of  the  Poets  inscribed :  '  Written  i8ig.  Revised 
and  copied  here,  Shakespeare's  Birthday,  23  April,  1S39.' 

partku  Colcribge. 

'  The  influence  of  Wordsworth's  peculiar  genius  is  more  discernible 
in  the  productions  of  Hartley  Coleridge  than  that  of  his  father,  more 
especially  in  the  Sonnets,  which,  I  venture  to  think,  may  sustain  a 
comparison  with  those  of  the  elder  writer.  Their  port  is  indeed  less 
majestic,  they  have  less  dignity  of  purpose,  and,  particularly  in  com- 
bination, are  less  weighty  in  effect ;  but  taken  as  single  compositions, 


426  Notes 

fiartlcg  Cflkribgf. 

they  are  not  less  graceful,  or  less  fraught  with  meaning  ;  they  possess 
a  softer  if  not  a  deeper  pathos,  they  have  at  least  as  easy  a  flow  and  as 
perfect  an  arrangement.  A  tender  and  imaginative  fancy  plays  about 
the  thought,  and  as  it  were  lures  it  forward,  raising  an  expectation  which 
is  fully  satisfied.  Indeed,  if  I  am  not  wholly  mistaken,  there  will  be 
found  among  these  sonnets,  models  of  composition  comparable  to  those 
of  the  greatest  masters. ' — Rev.  Derwent  Coleridge. ' 

'  That  infirmity  of  will  which  is  so  touchingly  acknowledged  and 
deplored  in  the  poetry  of  Hartley  Cole^dge  was  the  cause  doubtless  of 
his  not  reaching  a  far  higher  place  in  literature.  His  poems  are  excel- 
lent alike  for  soundness  of  thought,  descriptive  power,  fancy,  and  felicity 
of  diction  ;  and  their  moral  tone  is  elevating.  His  Sonnets  are  very 
remarkable.  They  are  the  most  imaginative  part  of  his  writings,  as  well 
as  the  most  highly  finished  ;  and  possess  that  indescribable  union  of 
sweetness  and  subtle  pathos  for  which  the  sonnets  of  Shakespeare  are  so 
remarkable.' — Aubrey  de  Vere."^ 

PAGE 

161 — cccxvil,  3-4.  Cp.  Wordsworth's  Song  at  the  Feast  of  Broiigham 

Castle  :  <  -pj^g  silence  that  is  in  the  starry  sky, 

The  sleep  that  is  among  the  lonely  hills.' 
This  and  the  sonnet  given  under  cccxx  were  written  not  later  than 
February,  1823.     They  appeared  in  The  London  Magazine  of  that 
date,  addressed  to  R.    S.   Jameson,  husband  of  Mrs.  Jameson, 
authoress  of  The  Loves  of  the  Poets,  &c. 
162 — cccxix.    Cp.  Wordsworth's  sonnet,  cxc  (p.  97). 

cccxx.  With  this  most  pathetic  sonnet  read  another  of  the  same 
series,  evidently  reminiscent  of  the  beautiful  lines,  full  of  a  prescient 
tenderness,  which  Wordsworth  had  written  on  Hartley  as  a  child 
thirty  years  before  ( To  LL.  C.     Six  Years  Old)  : 

'  O  Thou  !  whose  fancies  from  afar  are  brought ; 

Who  of  thy  words  dost  make  a  mock  apparel. 

And  fittest  to  unutterable  thought 

The  breeze-like  motion  and  the  self-born  carol ; 

Thou  faery  Voyager  !  that  dost  float 

In  such  clear  water,  that  thy  boat 

May  rather  seem 

To  brood  on  air  than  on  an  earthly  stream  ; 

Suspended  in  a  stream  as  clear  as  sky. 

Where  earth  and  heaven  do  make  one  imagery ; 

O  blessed  Vision  !  happy  Child, 

Thou  art  so  exquisitely  wild, 

1  Memoir  prefixed  to  the  Poems,  i,  clxi. 

"^Select  Specimens  of  the  English  Poets,  -with  Biographical  Notices,  &c.,  1858, 
p.  218. 


Notes 


PAGE 


427 


I  think  of  thee  with  many  fears 

For  what  may  be  thy  lot  in  future  years. 


Thou  art  a  Dew-drop,  which  the  morn  brings  forth, 
111  fitted  to  sustain  unlcindly  shocks, 
Or  to  be  trailed  along  the  soiling  earth  ; 
A  gem  that  glitters  while  it  lives, 
And  no  forewarning  gives  ; 
But,  at  the  touch  of  wrong,  without  a  strife 
Slips  in  a  moment  out  of  life.' 
This  is  the  sonnet  {Poems,  p.  11) : 

How  long  I  sail'd,  and  never  took  a  thought 
To  what  port  I  was  bound  !     Secure  as  sleep, 
I  dwelt  upon  the  bosom  of  the  deep 
■  And  perilous  sea.     And  though  my  ship  was  fraught 
With  rare  and  precious  fancies,  jewels  brought 
From  fairy-land,  no  course  I  cared  to  keep. 
Nor  changeful  wind  nor  tide  I  heeded  ought. 
But  joy'd  to  feel  the  merry  billows  leap. 
And  watch  the  sunbeams  dallying  with  the  waves  ; 
Or  haply  dream  what  realms  beneath  may  lie 
Where  the  clear  ocean  is  an  emerald  sky, 
And  mermaids  warble  in  their  coral  caves, 
Yet  vainly  woo  me  to  their  secret  home  ; — 
And  sweet  it  were  for  ever  so  to  roam. 
162-163— cccxx-cccxxi.  Quoting  these  and  other  illustrations  from  this 
series  in  an  analysis  of  Hartley  Coleridge,  the  late  Walter  Bagehot 
remarks  {Literaiy  Studies,  edited  by  R.  H.  Hutton,  1879,  i,  63)  : 
'  It  is  in  this  self-delineative  species  of  poetry  that,  in  our  judgment, 
Hartley  Coleridge  has  attained  to  nearly,  if  not  quite  the  highest 
excellence  ;  it  pervades  his  writings  everywhere.  .    .  .  Indeed  the 
whole  series  of  sonnets  with  which  the  earliest  and  best  work  of 
Hartley  began  is  (with  a  casual  episode  on  others),  mainly  and 
essentially  a  series  on  himself.     Perhaps  there  is  something  in  the 
structure  of  the  sonnet  rather  adapted  to  this  species  of  composition. 
It  is  too  short  for  narrative,  too  artificial  for  the  intense  passions, 
too  complex  for  the  simple,  too  elaborate  for  the  domestic  ;  but  in 
an  impatient  world  where  there  is  not  a  premium  on  self-describing, 
whoso  would  speak  of  himself  must  be  wise  and  brief,  artful  and 
composed — and  in  these  respects  he  will  be  aided  by  the  concise 
dignity  of  the  tranquil  sonnet.' 
165-^cccxxv.    '  In  all  respects  adequate  to  its  high  theme.'— ^wrj/ 
Reed.     Compare  Mr.  Arnold's  treatment  {Poems,  ed.  1877,  i,  5)  : 

SHAKSPEARE. 
Others  abide  our  question.     Thou  art  free. 
We  ask  and  ask — Thou  smilest  and  art  still, 
Out-topping  knowledge.     For  the  loftiest  hill 
Who  to  the  stars  upcrowns  his  majesty,    - 


428  Notes 

« 

pHrllfg  Coleribgc. 

PAGE 

Plantirf^  his  stedfast  footsteps  in  the  sea, 

Making  the  heaven  of  heavens  his  dwelling-place, 

Spares  but  the  cloudy  border  of  his  base 

To  the  foil'd  searching  of  mortality  ; 

And  thou,  who  didst  the  stars  and  sunbeams  know, 

Self-school'd,  self-scann'd,  self-honour'd,  self-secure, 

Didst  stand  on  earth  unguess'd  at. — Better  so  ! 

All  pains  the  immortal  spirit  must  endure, 

All  weakness  which  impairs,  all  griefs  which  bow. 

Find  their  sole  voice  in  that  victorious  brow. 

Matthew  Arnold. 

161-165 — cccxvii-cccxxvi.  From  the /'t^d'wj ;  1833. 

166 — cccxxvii.  Dated  '  Spring  Cottage,  Feb.  12,1841.'  This  charming 
and  highly  characteristic  sonnet,  now  first  printed,  I  draw  forth  from 
the  obscurity  of  a  private  MS.  album  (containing  many  other  most 
interesting  autographs)  which,  at  the  time  our  sonnet  was  written  into 
it,  belonged  to  Charles  Swain  the  poet.  It  is  now  the  property  of 
Dr.  Coveney  of  Prestwich,  to  whose  courtesy  I  am  indebted  for 
the  privilege  of  adding  this  grain  of  Hartley  Coleridge's  gold  dust 
to  my  Ttrasury.  The  sonnet,  verbatim  as  given  in  the  text,  is 
written,  dated,  and  signed  in  the  undoubted  autograph  of  Hartley 
Coleridge.  I  presume  the  youngest  reader  would  resent  any  fur- 
ther information  than  the  allusion  itself  supplies  (1.  12)  touching 
the  '  birds  '  that  wrought  the 

'  good  and  pious  deed 
Of  which  we  in  the  Ballad  read.' 

Curiously  enough,  the  two  ballads  of  The  Children  in  the  Wood  and 
Barbara  Alletis  Cruelty  stand  in  close  proximity  in  Percy  (Reliques, 
ed.  Wheatley,  1877,  vol.  iii,  Book  the  Second,  p.  128-169). 
167— cccxxix.  L.  2.     Wordsworth  (Exmrsion ,  Bk,  I)  : 

'  that  mighty  orb  of  song, 
The  divine  Milton.' 

A  liter  (Toems,  1833,  p.  134)  : 

HOMER. 
Far  from  all  measured  space,  yet  clear  and  plain 
As  sun  at  noon,  '  a  mighty  orb  of  song ' 
Illumes  extremest  Heaven.     Beyond  the  throng 
Of  lesser  stars,  that  rise,  and  wex,  and  wane. 
The  transient  rulers  of  the  fickle  main. 
One  steadfast  light  gleams  through  the  dark  and  long 
And  narrowing  aisle  of  memory.     How  strong, 
How  fortified  with  all  the  numerous  train 
Of  human  truths.  Great  Poet  of  thy  kind, 
Wert  thou,  whose  verse,  capacious  as  the  sea, 


Notes 


429 


And  various  as  the  voices  of  the  wind, 
Swell'd  with  the  gladness  of  the  battle's  glee — 
And  yet  could  glorify  infirmity, 
When  Priam  wept,  or  shame-struck  Helen  pined. 
167— CCCXXX,  13-14.     Cp.   Mr.  Patmore's  delineation  of  his  '  Ruth ' 
(  Tamerton  Church-  Tower,  iv,  4) : 

'  A  girl  of  fullest  heart  she  was  ; 
Her  spirit's  lovely  flame 
Nor  dazzled  nor  surprised,  because 

It  always  burned  the  same  ; 
And  in  the  maiden  path  she  trod 
Fair  was  the  wife  foreshown, 
A  Mary  in  the  house  of  God, 
A  Martha  in  her  own.' 
While  Mr.  Patmore's  little  volume  is  in  my  hand,  let  us  secure  his 
voice  for  our  Sonnet-Antiphon.    i^Tamerton   Church-Tower  and 
Other  Poems  :  1853,  p.  21S) : 

My  childhood  was  a  vision  heavenly  wrought  ; 

High  joys  of  which  I  sometimes  dream,  yet  fail 

To  recollect  sufficient  to  bewail, 

And  now  for  ever  seek,  came  then  unsought. 

But  thoughts  denying  feeling,  every  thought 

Some  buried  feeling's  ghost,  a  spirit  pale. 

Sprang  up,  and  wordy  nothings  could  prevail 

And  juggle  with  my  soul  ;  since,  better  taught  : 

The  Christian's  apprehension,  light  that  solves 

Doubt  without  logic,  rose  in  logic's  room  ; 

Sweet  faith  came  back,  sweet  faith  that  hope  involves, 

And  joys,  like  stars,  which,  though  they  not  illume 

This  mortal  night,  have  glory  that  dissolves 

And  strikes  to  quick  transparence  all  its  gloom. 

Coventry  Pattnore. 
168 — cccxxxi,  5.   Cp.   Polwhele's  use  of  a  similar  image  in  one  of  his 
sonnets, — smoke  rising  from  a  thatch-roofed  cottage  on  a  calm 
evening  {Pictures  from  Nature,  2nd  ed.  [1786],  p.  17)  : 
'  With  its  grey  Column  to  yon'  sapphire  Cloud 
Stealing  in  Stillness  the  calm  Mind  ascends — 
The  unruffled  Line,  tho'  lost  amid  the  Shroud 
Of  Heaven,  in  Fancy  rising,  never  ends  ! 
Thus  ever  may  my  tranquil  Spirit  rise 
Free  from  the  Gust  of  Passion — to  the  Skies  ! ' 
cccxxxil.     The  title  is  supplied. 

cccxxxi-cccxxxii.  Compare  the  different  modes  in  which 
several  living  writers  have  presented  the  subject  of  Prayer.  The 
first  illustration  I  select  is  from  the  pen  of  one  who  has  identified 
himself  with  the  literature  of  the  Sonnet  not  only  by  many  highly- 
finished  compositions  of  his  own  in  that  kind,  but  as  one  of  its 
most  charming  historians.  {Sabbatioii  ;  Honor  Ahale  ;  and  Other 
Poetns  :  1838,  p.  162,  as  amended  1865) : 


43°  Notes 

fiarikg  Colcribge. 

Lord,  what  a  change  within  us  one  short  hour 
Spent  in  thy  presence  will  prevail  to  make, 
What  heavy  burdens  from  our  bosoms  take, 

What  parched  grounds  refresh,  as  with  a  shower  !  '^^ 

We  kneel,  and  all  around  us  seems  to  lower  ;  ':-. 

We  rise,  and  all,  the  distant  and  the  near,  .% 

Stands  forth  in  sunny  outline,  brave  and  clear  ;  \ 

We  kneel  how  weak,  we  rise  how  full  of  power.  'i 

Why  therefore  should  we  do  ourselves  this  wrong,  1 

Or  others — that  we  are  not  always  strong,  ** 

That  we  are  ever  overborne  with  care,  .  | 

That  we  should  ever  weak  or  heartless  be,  \ 

Anxious  or  troubled,  when  with  us  is  prayer, 
And  joy  and  strength  and  courage  are  with  Thee  ? 

Richai'd  Chenevix  Trench. 
It  may  be  observed  with  regard  to  the  second — one  of  the  series  of 
short  poems  composing  '  Rose's  Diary,'  printed  with  one  of  the  author's 
prose  works — that,  like  Shakspeare's  99th  Sonnet,  Sara  Coleridge's 
verses  on  Blanco  White,  and  other  abnonnal  examples  that  might  be 
mentioned,  it  consists  of  fifteen  lines,  and  that  it  and  others  of  the  series 
furnish  an  interesting  and,  so  far  as  I  can  recollect,  unique  variety  of 
what  Mr.  Palgrave  regards  as  a  judicious  expansion  of  the  sonnet-form 
{stip7-a,  p.  296).  The  Silurist  himself  never  echoed  George  Herbert 
more  perfectly  than  does  this  'sweet  singer'  in  the  nineteenth  century 
{Quinquinergia,  1854,  p.  321)  : 

Prayer  is  the  world-plant's  purpose,  the  bright  flower, 

The  ultimate  meaning  of  the  stem  and  leaves  : — 

The  spire  of  the  church  ;  and  it  receives 

Such  lightning  calm  as  comforts,  not  aggrieves. 

And  with  it  brings  the  fructifying  shower. 

Prayer  is  the  hand  that  catcheth  hold  on  peace  : 

The  living  heart  of  good  and  nobleness. 

Whose  pulses  are  the  measure  of  the  stress 

Wherewith  He  us  doth,  we  do  Him,  possess  : 

When  these  do  fail,  our  very  lives  decease. 

Who  uses  prayer,  a  friend  shall  never  miss  ; 

If  he  should  slip,  a  timely  staff  and  kind 

Placed  in  his  grasp  by  hands  unseen  shall  find  ; 

Sometimes  upon  his  forehead  a  soft  kiss  ; 

And  arms  cast  round  him  gently  from  behind. 

Henry  Septimus  Sutton. 
The  third  and  last  illustration  I  will  select  is  taken  from  the  Devo- 
tional section  of  Ambarvalia:  Poems  by  Thomas  Burbidge  and  Arthur 
H.  Clough,  1849,  P-  155  : 

O  leave  thyself  to  God  !  and  if  indeed 
'Tis  given  thee  to  perform  so  vast  a  task, 
«  Think  not  at  all — think  not,  but  kneel  and  ask. 

O  friend,  by  thought  was  never  creature  freed 


Notes  43 1 

PAGE 

From  any  sin,  from  any  mortal  need  : 

Be  patient  !  not  by  thouf^ht  canst  thou  devise 

What  course  of  life  for  thee  is  right  and  wise  ; 

It  will  be  written  up,  and  thou  wilt  read. 

Oft  like  a  sudden  pencil  of  rich  light, 

Piercing  the  thickest  umbrage  of  the  wood. 

Will  shoot,  amidst  our  troubles  infinite, 

The  Spii'it's  voice  :  oft,  like  the  balmy  flood 

Of  morn,  surprise  the  universal  night 

With  glory,  and  make  all  things  sweet  and  good  ! 

Thomas  Burbidge. 

169 — cccxxxiii.  One  of  a  series  of  eighteen  '  Sonnets  suggested  by  the 
Seasons,' of  which  I  subjoin  a  second  example,  together  with  a 
sonnet  descriptive  of  Spring  by  a  living  poet.     {Poems,  ii,  62) : 

FEBRUARY  ist,    1842, 
One  month  is  past,  another  is  begun, 
Since  merry  bells  rung  out  the  dying  year, 

And  buds  of  rarest  green  begin  to  peer,  ^ 

As  if  impatient  for  a  warmer  sun  ; 
And  though  the  distant  hills  are  bleak  and  dun, 
The  virgin  snowdrop,  like  a  lambent  fire, 
Pierces  the  cold  earth  with  its  green-sheath'd  spire  ; 
And  in  dark  woods  the  wandering  little  one  j 

May  find  a  primrose.     Thus  the  better  mind 
Puts  forth  some  flowers,  escaped  from  Paradise, 
Though  faith  be  dim  as  faintest  wintry  skies. 
And  passion  fierce  as  January  wind. 

O  God,  vouchsafe  a  sunbeam  clear  and  kind  , 

To  cheer  the  pining  flow'ret  ere  it  dies.  i 

Cova^2iXQ  {Laurella  and  Other  Poems,  1876,  p.  218): 

THE  FIRST  SPRING   DAY.  j 

But  one  short  week  ago  the  trees  were  bare,  i 

And  winds  were  keen,  and  violets  pinched  with  frost ;  I 

Winter  was  with  us  ;  but  the  larches  tost  | 

Lightly  their  crimson  buds,  and  here  and  there  i 

Rooks  cawed.     To-day  the  Spring  is  in  the  air  l 

And  in  the  blood  :  sweet  sun-gleams  come  and  go  ; 

Upon  the  hills,  in  lanes  the  wild-flowers  blow,  ; 

And  tender  leaves  are  bursting  everywhere. 
About  the  hedge  the  small  birds  peer  and  dart, 
Each  bush  is  full  of  amorous  flutterings 
And  little  rapturous  cries.     The  thrush  apart 
Sits  throned,  and  loud  his  ripe  contralto  rings. 
Music  is  on  the  wind,  and  in  my  heart 
Infinite  love  for  all  created  things. 

yohn  Tod  hunter.^ 

^  LI.  3  and  II.  Cp.  Tennyson  {In  Memoriam,  xci)  : 

'  When  rosy  plumelets  tuft  the  larch,  ! 

And  rarely  pipes  the  mounted  thrush.'  \ 


43  2  Notes 


PAGE 


partkg  doltribge. 

169 — CCCXXXIV.  Compare  on  the  same  theme  Scotland's  sweetest  and 
tenderest  old  poet  {Flowres  of  Sion,  ed.  1630,  p.  7) : 

FOR    THE  MAGDALENE. 
These  Eyes  (deare  Lord)  once  Brandons  of  Desire, 
Fraile  Scoutes  betraying  what  they  had  to  keepe, 
Which  their  owne  heart,  then  others  set  on  fire. 
Their  traitrous  blacke  before  thee  heere  out-weepe  : 
These  Lockes,  of  blushing  deedes  the  faire  attire, 
Smooth-frizled  Waves,  sad  Shelfes  which  shadow  deepe, 
Soule-stinging  Serpents  in  gilt  curies  which  creepe, 
To  touch  thy  sacred  Feete  doe  now  aspire. 
In  Seas  of  Care  behold  a  sinking  Barke, 
By  windes  of  sharpe  Remorse  unto  thee  driven, 
O  let  mee  not  expos'd  be  Ruines  marke  ; 
My  faults  contest  (Lord)  say  they  are  forgiven. 
Thus  sigh'd  to  Jesus  the  Bethanian  faire, 
His  teare-wet  Feete  still  drying  with  her  Haire. 

PVilliavt  Drunimond} 

166-169— CCCXXVlll-cccxxxiv,  From  the  posthumous  Poems  by  Hart- 
ley Coleridge.      With  a  Memoir  by  his  Brother:  1851. 

Cljarlfs  loljitstmt. 

170 — cccxxxv.  From  Sonnets,  Original  and  Translated,  by  the  late 
Charles  Johnston,  Esq.,  of  Danson,  Kent :  1823.  It  had  appeared 
shortly  before  as  one  of  his  contributions  to  A  Collection  of  Poems, 
chiefly  Manuscript,  and  from  Living  Authors,  Edited  for  the  Benefit 
of  a  Friend,  by  Joanna  Baillie  (1823),  in  a  foot-note  to  which  the 
editress  announces  that  the  author,  a  nephew  of  Professor  William 
Smyth  of  Cambridge,  had  just  sunk  into  an  early  grave. 

Gliomas  poob. 

171 — CCCXXXVli.  The  first  of  two  sonnets  on  the  same  subject. 
170-173— cccxxxvi-CCCXLi.  Given  from  his /'^^ww  .•  1846.   They  had 
all  appeared  in  serials,  chiefly  The  London  Magazine,  between  1822 

and  1827. 

loljit  Utottltra. 

CCCXLII.   From  the  collected  edition  of  his  Poems  :  with  a  Me- 
moir by  the  Rev.  Prebendary  Coleridge,  &c.,  1876  (ii,  407). 


'  L.  I.  Brandons  (=  torches)  :  '  Tapers' (1656)  ;  $. /aire  :  'gilt'  ;  6-7. 
'  Waves  curling,  wrackefull  shelfes  to  shadow  deepe, 
^  Rings  wedding  Soules  to  Sinnes  lethargicke  sleepe,'  (1623)  ; 

expos  d  be  Ruines  :  '  be  Ruines  aym'd-at'  (1656). 


Notes  433 

Cljamttg  Pare  Siofonsljtnb. 

PAGE 

174 — cccxLlii.  From  Sermons  in  Sonnets,  &c.,  1851,  Text,  2  Corinth. 
vi.  10.  'As  sorrowful,  yet  always  rejoicing.' 

Isaac  MUIliams. 

CCCXLIV.  This  sonnet,  given  from  The  Catfiedral,  or  the  Catholic 
and  Apostolic  Church  in  England,  1838,  had  already  appeared  in 
the  Lyra  Apostolica,  1836,  under  the  signature  ?.  F.  W.  Faber,  in 
one  of  his  sonnets  ('  Favourite  Books '),  describes  Origen  as  '  my 
dear  and  perilous  guide.' 
175 — CCCXLV-CCCXLVI.     From  Thoughts  in  Past  Years,  1838. 

STIjomas  ITottcIl  |3ci)bocs. 

176 — CCCXLVII.  Given  from  the  posthumous  volume  of  Poems  by  the 
author  of  The  Brides'  Tragedy  (1822)  and  Death's  Jest-Book,  or  The 
Fool's  Tragedy  (1850),  published  with  a  Memoir  in  1851.  I  have 
ventured  to  alter    '  eyes '  to  eye  in  1.  4. 

^amurl  ITamaii  l^fe^tte'-"'^' 

\lt^\T] — CCCXLViii-cccL.  From  his  Z>r/<r  (9^^;mo-j.-  1828.  Charles 
Lamb,  writing  in  acknowledgment  of  a  gift-copy  of  this  little  volume, 
which  was  dedicated  to  him,  said  :  '  I  have  been  much  pleased  with 
it  throughout,  but  am  most  taken  with  the  peculiar  delicacy  of  some 
of  the  Sonnets.'  (Memoir  prefixed  to  Blanchard's  Poetical  Works, 
1876).  It  may  be  mentioned  that  an  inferior  version  of  cccxLix 
makes  its  appearance  in  the  recent  Aldine  edition  of  Keats  as  a 
'Sonnet  of  doubtful  authenticity,'  the  editor,  Lord  Houghton,  re- 
marking in  a  foot-note  that  he  believes  it  to  be  '  one  of  George 
Byron's  forgeries.' 

^okrf  ^kpljnt  Pafoher. 

178 — CCCLI.  Yxom.  Records  of  the  Western  Shore.  Second  Series.  By  the 
Reverend  R.  S.  Harvker,  M.A.,  Vicar  of  Morwe^istow,  Cornwall: 
1836  ;  but  with  the  heading  (Vulgate,  St.  Matt,  vi,  26)  as  in  The 
Cornish  Ballads,  1869.  The  volume  last  named,  and  the  collected 
Poems,  1879,  read  '  Grasps '  for  Grasp  in  1.  5,  completely  destroying 
the  sense.  The  sonnet  appears  also  in  Mr.  Hawker's  Ecclesia  :  A 
Volume  of  Poems,  1840,  with  'waves'  for  wave  in  1.  2.  In  a  very 
interesting  presentation-copy  of  that  work,  containing  numerous 
notes  and  corrections  in  the  author's  own  hand,  described  by  Mr. 
J.  E.  Bailey  in  Notes  and  Queries,  15  July,  1876,  this  '  Sonnet  of  the 
cc 


434  Notes 


PAGE 


Sea,'  as  its  title  stood  until  1869,  is  marked  as  having  been  '  wit  ^t 
Boscastle  :  Stephens  of  Calver,  Wife,  and  Wife's  Sister  on  the  Sea.' 
The  recent  edition  supplies  the  date,  'August  25,  1835.' 

178 — CCCLii.  Dated  1840.  From  Reeds  Shaken  with  thelVmd,  1843  ; 
but  title  of  i86g  as  above,  in  lieu  of  '  Ecclesiography '  as  here,  or 
'  The  Stem  and  the  Boughs,'  as  it  became  in  the  later  Echoes  from 
Old  Cormuall,  1846. 

lyg CCCLIII.  Dated  1842.    The  following  extract  from  a  letter  of  Mr. 

Hawker's,  dated  June  15,  1856,  is  appended  to  this  sonnet  in  the 
posthumous  edition  :  '  I  inserted  in  my  sermon  an  account  of  the 
discovery  of  St.  Thomas  the  Apostle's  death  and  burial  in  India. 
Thus  the  sole  question  ever  was,  Is  it  apostolic  ?  Then  it  must 
endure.  Was  it  from  one  of  the  Twelve  ?  Then  it  will  never  pass 
away.  A  small  company  of  Christian  men  found  in  Upper  India 
among  the  mountains,  origin  unknown  ;  afterwards  a  tomb,  with 
staff  and  cross,  a  legend  that  there  lived,  laboured,  and  was  slain, 
St.  Thomas  the  Apostle.  St.  Thomas  the  Twin,  even  in  his  ashes, 
survived  the  apostolic  fire,  and  whole  ages  after  he  was  dust  virtue 
went  out  of  the  dust  of  St.  Thomas  of  India.' 

CCCLiv.  Dated  in  the  collective  edition  '  Feast  of  St.  John  the 
Baptizer,  1843,'  and  introduced  as  follows  :  '  The  well  of  St.  John 
in  the  Wilderness  stands  and  flows  softly  in  the  eastern  boundary 
of  Morwenstow  Glebe.  In  the  old  Latin  Endowment,  still  pre- 
served in  Bishop  Brentingham's  Register  in  the  Archives  of  Exeter, 
A.D.  1296,  the  Church  land  is  said  to  extend  eastward,  ad  que n dam 
fo7ttem  Johaniiis.  Water  wherewithal  to  fill  the  font  for  baptism 
is  always  drawn  from  this  well  by  the  Sacristan  in  pitchers  set  apart 
for  this  purpose.' 

CCCLIII-CCCLIV.  From  Echoes  from  Old  Cornwall :  1846. 

Sir  SiJlHIram  |iofaan:  famrltoit. 

180— CCCLV.  This  sonnet,  the  sublime  and  holy  aspiration  of  one  of  the 
greatest  and  best  men  of  any  age,'  is  given  from  the  biographical 
Memoir  of  Hamilton  written  by  his  friend  the  Rev.  R.  P.  Graves 
of  Dublin,  which  appeared  in  The  Dublin  University  Magazine  for 

>  Mr.  Aubrey  de  Vere,  in  his  Recollections,  &c.,  as  before  (Wordsworth's  Prose 
IVorks,  iii,  492),  says  :  '  Wordsworth's  estimate  of  his  contemporaries  was  not  gene- 
rally high.  I  remember  his  once  saying  to  me,  "  I  have  known  many  that  might  be 
called  very  clever  men,  and  a  good  many  of  real  and  vigorous  abilities,  but  few  of 
genius;  and  only  one  whom  I  should  call  '  wonderful.'  That  one  was  Coleridge.  .  .  . 
The  only  man  like  Coleridge  whom  I  have  known  is  Sir  William  Hamilton,  Astrono- 
mer Royal  of  Dublin." ' 


Notes  455 


PAGE 


January,  1842.  Its  composition,  however,  must  be  assigned  to  a 
much  earlier  date.  Ticknor,  who  justly  regarded  it  as  one  of  the 
finest  sonnets  in  the  English  language,  speaks  in  a  letter  (Z/y^,  Let- 
ters, &c.,  1876,  ii,  471)  of  his  daughter's  having  had  a  copy  of  it 
given  her  by  Sir  William  in  August,  1835,  a  few  days  after  they  had 
witnessed  him  receive  the  honour  of  knighthood  ;  but  he  errs  in  sup- 
posing that  it  was  evoked  by  that  event.  I  have  seen  documentary 
proof  that  it  was  written  in  November,  1831  ;  and  it  arose  out  of 
a  conversation  with  the  friend  named  above,  in  whose  forthcoming 
Lifeoi  Hamilton  the  incident  will  be  duly  related.  I  take  the  head- 
ing only  from  Ticknor's  version,  which,  it  may  be  remarked,  has 
'  leave  '  for  keep  in  1.  7.  It  is  gratifying  to  know  that  the  Life  and 
Correspondetice  of  Hamilton  on  which  Mr.  Graves  has  been  so  long 
engaged,  and  which  will  include,  besides  other  remains,  many  beau- 
tiful sonnets  hitherto  uncollected,  may  now  be  expected  shortly. 
180 — CCCLVi.  Discoverer,  &c.  :  more  accurately  '  with  Le  Verrier,  co- 
discoverer,'  &c.  This  second  example,  selected  partly  as  affording 
a  fine  proof  of  the  great  mathematician's  sense  of  the  duty  of  unsel- 
fishness in  the  pursuit  and  communication  of  truth,  applying  to  a 
brother  discoverer  in  science  what  the  earlier  sonnet  had  expressed 
for  himself,  is  given  from  a  paper  on  Hamilton,  written,  I  believe, 
by  Professor  P.  G.  Tait,  of  Edinburgh,  and  printed  in  Tke  North 
British  Review  iox  September,  1866.  Dr.  C.  M.  Ingleby  ('  Modem 
Metaphysicians  :  '  British  Controversialist,  September,  1869)  calls 
it  '  the  pearl  of  Hamilton's  sonnets.' 

f  citrg  ^lassforb  ||cll. 

181 — CCCLVII-CCCLVIII.  Yrora.  Romances  and  Minor  Poems  :  1866. 

|oljtt  Stcrlhrg, 

182 — CCCLIX.  This  sonnet  and  one  or  two  others  of  lesser  merit,  excluded 
for  some  reason  from  the  little  volume  of  Poems  published  by  Moxon 
in  1839,  make  up,  so  far  as  is  known  to  me,  the  sum  of  Sterling's 
experiments  in  this  species  of  composition.  They  all  appeared  in 
The  Athenczum  during  1828,  and  were  reprinted  by  Archdeacon 
Hare,  with  the  prose  narratives  of  which  they  form  part — '  A  Medi- 
tation at  Netley  Abbey  '  and  '  The  Isle  of  Wight '  (  Travels  of  Theo- 
dore Elbert,  a  young  Swede) — in  the  second  of  the  memorial  volumes 
of  1848.  I  append  one  of  these  others,  descriptive  of  the  sandstone 
cliffs  '  which  run  behind  Steephill,  and  are  continued  the  whole 
way  from  Niton  to  Eastend  '  {Essays  and  Tales  by  John  Sterling, 
1848,  ii,  87)  : 


436  Notes 

PAGE 

The  hills  in  rude  tremendous  beauty  rise, 

With  frost  and  storm  through  countless  ages  rent ; 

Of  yellow,  brown,  and  red,  a  thousand  dyes 

On  each  rough  crag  and  airy  ledge  are  blent. 

These  giant  walls  a  haunt  secure  have  lent 

And  natural  dwelling  to  the  ivy's  green  ; 

And  none  along  these  rocks  their  gaze  have  sent, 

Nor  blest  with  softened  heart  its  living  sheen. 

Like  it,  along  the  steep,  man's  daily  way, 

All  high  resolves  and  gentle  feelings  climb. 

Each  sympathy  that  hallows  human  clay. 

Impulse  of  love,  and  Godward  thought  sublime. 

Beyond  that  toilsome  mountain's  summit  grey 

Is  nought  but  gales  of  joy  and  heavan's  unclouded  day. 

pdcra  Clarissn;  iron  |lank£. 

182 — CCCLX.  From  y^  Coronal  of  English  Verse  ;  or,  A  Selection  from 
English  and  American  Poets,  by  Thomas  Solly,  Professor,  and  Lec- 
turer on  English  Literature  at  the  University  of  Berlin.  Berlin  : 
1864.  This  gifted  lady,  the  wife  of  the  eminent  historian,  has 
another  poem  in  the  same  volume,  under  the  title  of  '  Wishes  for  a 
Supposed  Admirer,' which  is  not  unworthy  of  association  with  Cra- 
shaw's  '  Wishes  for  the  Supposed  Mistress,'  to  which  it  was  com- 
posed as  a  companion-piece. 

Cljarks  (3^£itn:j|S0n)  "^xawti. 

Archbishop  Trench,  lecturing  in  1866  on  the  history  of  the  English 
Sonnet,  observed  :  '  Alfred  Tennyson  never  seems  to  have  cared  much 
for  the  Sonnet  ;  at  least,  he  has  very  rarely  clothed  his  own  thoughts  in 

this  form But  although  he  has  given  us  little  in  this  kind,  there 

was  a  tiny  volume  of  Sonnets  published  by  his  brother  Charles,  between 
thirty  and  forty  years  ago,  which  shows  plainly  that,  however  the  poet- 
ical gift  may  have  come  to  its  head  in  Alfred,  he  is  not  the  only  poet 
of  the  family.  In  this  volume  .  .  .  there  are  some  Sonnets  of  rare  and 
excellent  workmanship.'  ' 

Charles  Tennyson,  like  his  illustrious  elder  brother  Alfred,  was  bom 
at  his  father's  rectory,  Somersby,  in  Lincolnshire,  and  received  his  early 
education  at  the  Grammar  School  of  Louth,  from  which  in  1827,  the  two 
youths  put  forth  the  now  famous  joint-volume.  Poems  by  Two  Brothers, 
so  prized  by  book-hunters  as  containing  the  poet-laureate's  earliest 
verses.     Subsequently,  they  removed  to  Trinity  College,  Cambridge, 


1  Dublin  Afternoon  Lectures,  as  before,  iv,  163. 


437 


Notes 

whither  another  brother,  Frederick,  the  eldest  of  this  family  of  poets 
for  he  too  is  a  poet — had  preceded  them  ;  and  it  was  while  there  that 
Charles  published  the  '  tiny  volume  ' '  of  which  the  lecturer  speaks,  and 
to  which  an  eminent  college-companion  of  the  poet's,  writing  about 
him  the  other  day,  pays  this  charming  tribute  :  that  it '  has  never,  during 
the  fifty  years  save  one  that  have  followed,  lost  for  me  any  part  of  its 
charm  :  but  I  can  take  it  up  at  any  hour  of  the  day,  sure  of  finding  all 
within  it  as  fresh  and  bright  as  when  I  was  an  undergraduate.'  -  Some 
time  after  leaving  college, Charles  Tennyson, for  family  reasons, assumed 
his  grandmother's  name  of  Turner.  He  took  holy  orders,  and,  either  in 
1S35  or  the  year  following,  became  vicar  of  Grasby,  in  his  native  county, 
where  he  ministered  until  his  lamented  death,  which  occurred  at  Chel- 
tenham on  the  25th  df  April  last,  in  the  71st  year  of  his  age. 

Mr.  Henry  G.  Hewlett,  in  an  article  on  English  Sonneteers,  written 
in  1873  apropos  of  Mr. Turner's  little  volumes,^  remarks  :  '  No  contem- 
porary poet  has  shown  a  more  persistent  preference  for  the  Sonnet  as  a 
mode  of  artistic  expression  than  Mr.  Charles  Turner.  Since  the  first 
appearance  of  a  volume  with  his  name,  in  1830,  to  the  present  year, 
when  we  welcome  a  fourth,  his  thoughts  have  rarely  been  crystallized  in 
any  other  shape,*  Though  far  less  known  than  they  deserve  to  be, 
these  volumes  have  not  escaped  the  recognition  of  discerning  eyes.  A 
copy  of  the  first  which  came  into  the  possession  of  Coleridge  was  liberally 
scored  with  his  marginal  annotations,  and  his  high  opinion  of  the  poetic 
promise  it  displayed  is  recorded  in  his  Table-Talk.^  Although  for  more 
than  thirty  years  afterwards,  Mr.  Turner  took  little  pains  to  keep  his 
name  remembered,  it  was  not  forgotten."  A  second  volume,  issued  in 
1864,  and  a  third  in  1868,  were  greeted  as  gifts  from  an  acknowledged 

'  Sonnets  and  Fugitive  Pieces,  by  Charles  Tennyson,  Trin.  Coil. — Cambridge  : 
1830.     Pp.  83. 

2  The  Nineteenth  Century,  Sept.,  1879.  Art.,  '  Charles  Tennyson  Turner,'  by- 
James  Spedding,  p.  464. 

^  The  Conieinporary  Review, 'Sift-pt.,  i?>T2.V- ^2,7-  The  student  may  be  referred 
also  to  the  following  articles  :  Leigh  Hunt's  Tatlcr.  Feb.  24 — Mar.  3,  1831  ;  The 
International  Feview  (New  York),  Sept.,  1875  ;  St.  James's  Magazine,  July,  1879; 
and  The  Leisure  Hour,  "i^ow.  6,  i?>js.  This  last,  written  by  Dr.  Grosart,  is  accom- 
panied by  a  faithful  and  well-executed  wood-cut  portrait  of  the  poet. 

*  There  are  no  sonnets  in  the  earlier  Poenis  by  Two  Brothers. 
^  See  under  ccclxii,  p.  439. 

*  Five-and-thirty  years  .'igo  the  now  venerable  author  of  '  Orion  '  remarked  {A 
New  Spirit  0/  the  Age.  Edited  by  K.  H.  Home,  :844,  i,  270):  '  There  is  something 
peculiarly  touching  in  the  withdrawal  of  Charles  Tennyson  from  the  pathway  to  the 
temple  of  Poesy,  as  though  he  would  prefer  to  see  his  brother's  name  enshrined  with 
an  undivided  fame.  One  little  volume  ofsweet  and  unpretending  poetry  comprises  all 
we  know  of  him.  It  has  long  been  out  of  print.  His  feeling  of  the  "use  and  service" 
of  poetry  in  the  world  may  be  comprised  in  a  few  lines,  which  may  also  be  regarded 
as  the  best  comment  upon  his  own  : — 

"We  must  have  music  while  we  languish  here. 
To  make  t"ne  Soul  with  plea.sant  fancies  rife 
And  soothe  the  stranger  from  another  sphere." 

Sonnet  15.' 


438  Notes 

Cljarks  ((Lcitngsoit)  Zxximx. 

benefactor,  and  must  have  prepared  a  larger  audience  for  the  reception 
of  his  newest  offering.  The  dominant  charm  of  all  these  Sonnets  is  the 
pervading  presence  of  the  vv'riter's  personality,  never  obtruded,  but  al- 
ways impalpably  diffused.  The  light  of  a  devout,  gentle,  and  kindly 
spirit,  a  delicate  and  graceful  fancy,  a  keen,  if  not  very  broad,  intelli- 
gence, irradiates  their  thoughts,  while  to  the  language  in  which  they 
are  condensed.  Art  lends  a  power  that 

"  Consolidates  the  flame. 
And  keeps  its  colours,  hardening  to  a  gem."  ' 
The  article  thus  concludes  :  '  Now  and  then  Mr.  Turner  has  been  tempted 
to  lavish  good  workmanship  upon  material  scarcely  worthy  of  it.  Weeded 
of  any  such  examples,  and  of  the  polemical  sonnets,  his  three  little  books 
might  well  be  collected  into  one,  and  brought  within  the  reach  of  a  wider 
circle.  That  such  poetry  needs  only  to  be  known  to  be  welcomed,  we 
cannot  doubt,  since  it  appeals  to  a  healthy  national  taste  to  which 
Chaucer,  Spenser  and  Wordsworth  have  successively  ministered,  and 
which  no  infection  of 

"  Poisonous  honey  stolen  from  France  " 
has  yet  succeeded  in  vitiating.' 

It  will  be  no  breach  of  confidence  here  to  state  that  such  a  design  as 
Mr.  Hewlett  suggests  is  being  carried  out  at  the  present  moment  by  Mr. 
Turner's  literary  executors.  The  forthcoming  volume,  besides  including 
some  uncollected  sonnets  and  the  '  many  more  in  manuscript '  which 
Mr.  Spedding  announces  (and  taps)  in  The  Nineteenth  Century,  will  be 
enriched  with  Coleridge's  marginal  annotations  referred  to  above, repro- 
duced— with  a  few  deductions  for  frayed  margins  and  faded  characters — 
from  the  original  copy,  which  fortunately  came  into  Mr.  Turner's  own 
hands  at  an  early  date,  and  is  still  a  treasured  possession  of  his  family. 
By  the  kindness  of  its  present  owner  I  have  had  an  opportunity  of 
examining  that  copy,  and  am  permitted  to  use  one  or  two  of  the  '  S.T. 
C  pencillings,  which  are  thus  printed  here  for  the  first  time. 

PAGE 

183 — CCCLXi.  On  this  sonnet,  Coleridge,  having  marked  admiringly  in 
the  margin  the  first  eight  lines,  and  written  '  dele '  opposite  the 
word  fond  in  1.  14,  annotates  :  '  A  noble  sonnet.  But  the  last  dis- 
tich is  inferior  to  my— 

And  Ocean  'mid  his  uproar  wild 
Speaks  safety  to  his  Island-child  ! 

Ode  on  Dep.  Year. 

I  notice  this,  only  because  it  is  too  inferior  for  the  resemblance. 
The  parenthesis  [=last  clause  of  1.  13]  is  weak,  and  of  an  atientone 
of  feeling — a  metabasis  eii  aXXo  yevoZ,  tho',  I  admit,  not  £t5 


Notes  •     439 

PAGE 

ETEpov.     But  it  is  a  noble  strain,  «^«  <j^j/a«/^.'    He  then  marks 
11.  10-12,  and  says  :    '  Might  I  recommend  Mr.  T.  to  substitute  : 
"  To  that  lone  Sound  mute  Listener  and  alone — 
And  yet  a  Sound  of  Commune,  strongly  thrown 
That  meets  the  Pine-grove  on  the  cliffs  above."  ' 
It  may  be  observed  that  any  alterations  which  the  sonnet  did  un- 
dergo afterwards  were  wisely  confined  to  the  first  portion  of  it. 
183  — CCCLXii.   It  is  upon  this  sonnet  that  Coleridge  makes  the  remark 
(in  slightly  different  form)  printed  in  the  Table-  Talk  (3rd  ed,  1851, 
p.  57) :   '  Mr.  Tennyson's  sonnets,  such  as  I  have  seen,  have  many 
of   the   characteristic   excellences   of  those   of  Wordsworth   and 
Southey.'    In  addition,  Coleridge  indulges  in  some  observations  on 
the  beautiful  word  *  gloaming  '  (Mr.  Turner's  original  expression 
for  twilight  in  1.  i)  which,  for  his  own  sake,  I  hardly  regret  that 
I  am  not  at  liberty  to  quote. 
185 — CCCLXV,  14.    mortal:  '  little  '  (1830).   Over  this  sonnet  Coleridge 
has  written  :   '  A  sweet  Sonnet :  and  with  the  exception  of  the  one 
vi^ord  "  little,"  faultless.'    At  the  bottom  of  the  page,  so  far  as  an 
amputated  dog's-ear  will  allow  me,  I  make  out  this  after-thought: 
'  "  Little  "  may  be  a  proper  word  if  Man  has  been  here  contem- 
plated positively — he  is   not  little,   comparatively,  in  his   Eagle 
relation  to  the  Pigeons.' 
183-187 — cccLXi-CCCLXix.  From  Sonnets  and  Fugitive  Pieces,  1830,  as 
altered  in  Small  Tableaux,  1868  (Macmillan  &  Co.),  and  in  Sonnets, 
Lyrics,   and  Translations,  1873  (H.  S.  King  &  Co.).  Of  these  ex- 
amples, besides  those  already  specified,  the  following  are  scored 
or  annotated  by  Coleridge  in  the  old' copy  :  cccLXiii-iv,  CCCLXVI- 
VII,  and  cccLXix. 
189 — CCCLXXIV.   '  Breathes  a  kindred  spirit  to  George  Herbert's,  with- 
out the  excess  of  quaintness  which  so  often  mars  his  utterances.' — 
H.  G.  Hewlett. 
187-199 — CCCLXX-CCCXCIV.     From  Sonnets,  1864,  and  the  two  later 
volumes  of  1868  and  1873,  as  above.   The  volume  of  1864  is  affec- 
tionately dedicated   to  his  brother,  the  poet-laureate,  whose  In 
Memofiam  is  thus  exquisitely  described  in  that  of  1868  {Small 
Tableaux,  p.  40)  : 

'  that  Book  of  memory. 
Which  is  to  grieving  hearts  like  the  sweet  south 
To  the  parched  meadow,  or  the  dying  tree  ; 
Which  fills  with  elegy  the  craving  mouth 
Of  sorrow — slakes  with  song  her  piteous  drouth. 
And  leaves  her  calm,  though  weeping  silently  ! ' 

200 — cccxcv.     Printed  in  Dr.  Grosart's  paper  in  The  Leisure  Hour, 
Nov.  6, 1875,  and  thus  introduced  :  '  Here  is  a  sonnet  that  reached 


440    '  Notes 

Cljarlcs   ((Ltnnjrson)  S^nrnxr. 

PAGE 

me  the  other  week  from  the  friend  to  whom  it  was  sent,  and  I 
print  it  with  the  modestly-put  consent  of  its  author.  It  will  re- 
pay to  pause  over  its  quaint  realism  of  observation — all  the  realism 
of  John  Clare,  but  with  an  added  glow  of  Tintoretto-colour  he 
rtever  could  impart.' 
200 — cccxcvi.  From  Macmillan's  Magazine,  December,  1876. 

Having  mentioned  Mr.  Frederick  Tennyson  as  a  poet — a  name  to 
which  even  his  single /m3//j/^^^  volume  ('  Days  and  Hours,'  1854)  gives 
him  an  indefeasible  title — I  am  happy  to  be  able  to  associate  him  with 
his  brothers  in  these  pages,  by  means  of  the  following  Keats-like  son- 
net, which,  though  written  forty  years  ago,  has  never,  I  believe,  been 

put  in  type  until  now.  * 

SONNET.  * 

'Tis  not  for  golden  eloquence  I  pray, 
A  godlike  tongue  to  move  a  stony  heart — 
Methinks  it  were  full  well  to  be  apart 
In  solitary  uplands  far  away, 
Betwixt  the  blossoms  of  a  rosy  spray. 
Dreaming  upon  the  wonderful  sweet  face 
Of  Nature,  in  a  wild  and  pathless  place. 
And  if  it  chanced  that  I  did  once  array, 
In  words  of  magic  woven  curiously. 
All  the  deep  gladness  of  a  summer's  morn, 
Or  rays  of  evening  that  light  up  the  lea 
On  dewy  days  of  spring,  or  shadows  borne 
Across  the  forehead  of  an  autumn  noon, — 
Then  would  I  die  and  ask  no  better  boon. 

Frederick  Tennyson. 

PAGE 

201-207 — CCCXCVII-CCCCX.  Poems.  By  Elizabeth  Barrett  Barrett.   1844. 
208 — ccccxil,  1-4.     The  passage  in  Theocritus  alluded  to  (Syracusan 
Gossips,  102)  is  thus  imitated  by  the  great  modern  idyllist  {Love 
and  Duty,  56) : 

'  The  slow  sweet  hours  that  bring  us  all  things  good, 
The  slow  sad  hours  that  bring  us  all  things  ill, 
And  all  good  things  from  evil.' 

209-ccccxiii.     '  This  has  been  said  before,  but  never  more  touchingly 
or  eloquently.'  Frederick  Locker  {Patchwork,  1879,  p.  12).  Com- 
pare the  old  song  (Wilbye's  Madrigales,  xii.  The  Second  Set,  1609): 
'  Love  not  me  for  comely  grace, 
For  my  pleasing  eye  or  face, 
Nor  for  any  outward  part. 
No,  nor  for  my  constant  heart, — 
For  those  may  faile,  or  turne  to  ill. 
So  thou  and  I  shall  sever  : 


Notes  441 

PAGE 

Keepe  therefore  a  true  womans  eye, 
And  love  me  still,  but  know  not  why — 
So  hast  thou  the  same  reason  still 
To  dote  upon  me  ever  ! ' 
and  a  little  poem  in  the  same  key  by  Alexander  Brome  (1620-1666), 
beginning '  'Tis  Rot  her  birth,  her  friends,  nor  yet  her  treasure ; '  both 
of  which,  together  with  Mrs.  Browning's  sonnet,  may  be  found  in 
juxtaposition  in  Mr.  Davenport  Adams's  Lyrics  of  Love  (1874). 
208-211 — ccccxi-ccccxviii.  Poems.  By  Elizabeth  Barrett  Browning  : 
1850.  I  presume  it  is  almost  unnecessary  to  observe  that  the  seven 
last  examples  belong  to  a  series  of  which  the  title  (a  purely  fictitious 
one)  was  doubtless  assumed  as  a  screen  proper  to  the  sacredly  per- 
sonal -character  of  the  poems  ;  for  of  these  far  more  truly  than  of 
Shakspeare's  Sonnets  may  it  be  affirmed  that  '  each  is  an  autobio- 
graphical confession.'  'A  passionate  tenderness,'  says  the  late 
William  Caldwell  Roscoe,  '  finds  a  voice  in  the  Forttiguese  SoJtnets. 
Nay,  so  passionate  and  so  tender  are  they,  that  one  half  shrinks 
from  the  perusal  of  them,  and  reads  M'ith  some  such  feelings  as 
one  opens  the  love-letters  of  those  long  dead,  and  can  scarcely 
reconcile  oneself  to  an  intrusion  into  the  innermost  secrets  of 
another  heart.'  Like  all  work  of  the  highest  originality,  these 
sonnets  have  had  a  marked  assimilative  effect  on  contemporary 
verse.  I  recall  one  very  perfect  echo  in  sonnet-form,  which  might 
pass  unchallenged  among  Mrs.  Browning's  sonnets,  and  may  even 
be  read  with  those  of  Shakspeare  devoted  to  the  subject  of  love  in 
absence.  It  occurs  in  a  little  volume  of  refined  and  thoughtful 
essays  and  poems  collected  under  the  title  of  The  Pelican  Papers 

.    (1873,  p.  19S)  •• 

LOVE   AND  ABSENCE. 

Let  it  not  grieve  thee,  dear,  to  hear  me  say 
^  'Tis  false  that  absence  maketh  the  fond  heart 

More  fond  ;  that  when  alone  and  far  apart 
From  thee  I  love  thee  more  from  day  to  day. 
.  Not  so  ;  for  then  my  heart  would  ever  pray 
For  longer  separation,  that  I  might 
In  absence  from  thee  gain  the  utmost  height 
Of  love  unrealized  ;  nor  would  I  stay 
In  my  swift  course,  but  ever  onward  press 
Until  mine  eager  hand  should  touch  the  goal 
Of  possible  passion.     Did  I  love  thee  less. 
Then  might  I  love  thee  more  ;  but  now  my  soul 
Is  filled  throughout  with  perfect  tenderness  : 
No  part  of  me  thou  hast,  but  the  full  whole. 

yaines  As  hero  ft  Noble. 

These  examples  from  Mrs.  Browning  are  given  as  finally  amended 
in  the  Fourth  Edition  of  her  Poems  :  1856. 


442  Notes 

f  nrrn  %\{qi\ 

PAGE 

212 — CCCCXIX,  6-7.  '  Flos  regum  Arthurus.' — ^Joseph  of  Exeter  (Frag- 
ment of  Antiocheis '). 

ccccxx.  One  of  a  series  of  sonnets  suggested  by  the  death  of  a 
young  mother.  The  funeral  sermon  was  on  •he  text,  '  The  Master 
is  come,  and  calleth  for  thee.' — St.  John  xi,  28. 

ccccxix-ccccxx.  Given  from  his  Poetical  Works  :  1845. 

^rtljur  ptnrg  pallam. 

213-214 — ccccxxi-ccccxxiii.  Dated  respectively  April  and  July,  1829, 

and  May,  1831. 
215 — ccccxxvi.  Dated  1831. 
213-215 — ccccxxi-ccccxxvi.  From  his  Remains,  in  Verse  and  Prose  : 

1834. 

Jfrfkrick  ^illmm  Jfabcr. 

216-217 — ccccxxvil-ccccxxx.  From  The  Cherzvell  Water-Lily,  and 
Other  Poems  :  1840;  butwith  theScriptural  mottoes  from  the  Douay 
(inplace  of  the  Authorized)  Version,  as  in  his  collected  Poems  :  1857. 
Besides  these  mottoes  (from  1  Pet.  i,  17,  yob  i,  22,  Eccles.  xii,  12, and 
Acts  V,  15),  there  is  also  the  general  one  (Ps.  ix,  20):  'Arise,  O 
Lord,  let  not  man  be  strengthened  :  let  the  gentiles  be  judged  in 
Thy  sight.'  The  Catholic  writer  before  quoted  {ante,  p.  258),  refer- 
ring to  Father  Faber  in  the  second  portion  of  his  valuable  Critical 
History  of  the  Sonnet  (DiM/n  Revieiv,  Jan.,  1877,  p.  158),  says  : 
'  ATnong  the  multiform  triumphs  of  the  versatile  genius  of  this 
gifted  man'  may  be  reckoned  remarkable  success  in  sonnet-writ- 
ing. Father  Faber's  sonnets  are  numerous,  and  of  a  high  order 
of  merit.  They  are  almost  all  regular  in  form,  and  they  are  free 
from  what  is  a  fault  in  Father  Faber's  poetry  generally,  the  ten- 
dency to  exuberance  of  language  and  to  excess  in  illustration.  .  .  . 
We  know  few  more  striking  poems  in  the  language  than  the  son- 
nets on  the  "  Four  Religious  Heathens."  ' 

218 — ccccxxxi.  From  The  Rosary,  and  Other  Poems  :  l'S:^S- 

A  peculiarity  in  the  structure  of  many  of  Father  Faber's  sonnets  is 
that  the  pause  or  turn  in  the  thought  is  made  to  take  place  in  the 
eleventh  verse,  instead  of  in  the  ninth  as  the  rule  enjoins. 

1  Mr.  Aubrey  de  Vere  in  his  Recollections,  as  before,  reports  Wordsworth's  having 
said  in  conversation  :  '  I  have  hardly  ever  known  any  one  bvit  myself  who  had  a  true 
eye  for  Nature,  one  that  thoroughly  understood  her  meanings  and  her  teachings — 
except '  (here  he  interrupted  himself)  '  one  person.  There  was  a  young  clergyman, 
called  Frederick  Faber,  who  resided  at  Ambleside.  He  had  not  only  as  good  an  eye 
for  Nature  as  I  have,  but  even  a  better  one,  and  sometimes  pointed  out  to  me  on  the 
mountains  effects  which,  with  all  my  great  experience,  I  had  never  detected.' — Words- 
worth's Prose  IVorks,  iii,  488. 


Notes  443 

PAGE 

2i8 — CCCCXXXII.  This  sonnet,  the  only  one  published,  but  not,  I  under- 
stand, the  only  one  written,  by  the  late  Mr.  Forster,  bears  date 
'  March,  1848,'  and  forms  the  Dedication  of  The  Life  ajid  Advai- 
tures  of  Oliver  Goldsmith  (1848),  as  the  title  of  his  biography  ran 
originally.     Hence  the  epithet  '  adventurous  '  in  1.  8. 

^rtljur  iuglj  Clouglj. 

219 — ccccxxxiii.  One  of  a  set  of  poems  under  the  motto,  'Blank  Mis- 
givings of  a  Creature  moving  about  in  Worlds  not  realised.'  Given 
from  Afitbarvalia  :  Poems  by  Thomas  Burbidge  and  Arthur  H. 
Clough  :  1849.  In  all  subsequent  English  impressions  of  Clough's 
poems  the  three  last  lines  of  this  sonnet  are  printed,  not  as  a  ques- 
tion, but  as  a  statement,  thus  : 

'  It  is  enough  to  walk  as  best  we  may, 
To  walk,  and,  sighing,  dream  of  that  blest  day 
When  ill  we  cannot  quell  shall  be  no  tnore. 

dLIjHdcs  llritgsIciT. 

CCCCXXXiv.  From  the  collected  edition  of  his  Poems  ;  including 
The  Saint's  Tragedy,  Andromeda,  Songs,  Ballads,  (s'c.:  1878. 

Mill'mm  dTalbbcH  IIoscdc. 

220 — CCCCXXXVi.  Dated  '  Richmond,  1852.' 

221 — ccccxxxvil.  The  pre-eminently  perfect  workmanship  and  beauty 
of  this  sonnet  suggest  the  remark — otherwise  hardly  necessary,  I 
presume — that  these  exquisite  productions  had  not  the  advantage 
of  their  author's  final  revision.  Had  he  lived  to  finish  the  studies 
in  sonnet-form  contained  in  Mr.  Hutton's  memorial  volumes,  my 
selection  from  his  sonnets  would  have  been  much  less  limited.  Not 
a  few  of  these  studies  possess  the  mournful  interest  and  value  of 
unfinished  masterpieces.  I  select  two  examples  {Poems  and  Essays, 

i,  75) : 

A   WET  AUTUMN, 

Behold  the  melancholy  season's  wane  ! 
Oppressed  with  clouds  and  with  the  rainy  days, 
And  the  great  promise  of  that  lavish  gain 
All  shattered,  which  his  shining  youth  did  raise, 
In  misty  fields  the  dripping  harvest-grain 
Hangs  its  dank  head  ;  the  sorrowing  reaper  stays 
From  day  to  day  his  sickling,  chiding  in  vain 
His  unused  sunshine  and  unwise  delays. 
Thus  when  I  see  this  bright  youth  aged  in  tears,. 
With  bitter  drops  I  wash  my  wasting  prime, 


444 


PAGE 


Notes 

WxXXxxm  ^albfotU  ^oscoe. 

And  sadly  see  mine  own  unharvested  years 
In  the  unprofited  past  their  dark  hours  wave, 
And  the  great  visions  of  my  early  time 
Wax  fainter,  and  my  face  grows  to  the  grave. 
Ha/od linos,  I S 4^ . 

M.  S. 

Like  morning,  or  the  early  buds  in  spring, 
Or  voice  of  children  laughing  in  dark  streets, 
Or  that  quick  leap  with  which  the  spirit  gr'eets 
The  old  revisited  mountains — some  such  thing 
She  seemed  in  her  bright  home.     Joy  and  Delight 
And  full-eyed  Innocence  with  folded  wing 
Sat  in  her  face  ;  and  from  her  happy  smiling 
Clear  air  she  shook,  like  star-lit  summer  night. 
What  needed  pain  to  purge  a  spirit  so  pure  ? 
Like  fire  it  came, — what  less  than  fire  can  be 
The  cleansing  Spirit  of  God  ?     Oh,  happy  she, 
Able  with  holy  patience  to  endure  ! 
Her  joy  made  peace,  and  those  bright  ores  of  nature 
Subdued  to  purest  gold  of  piety. 
Ha/od unos,  lSj2. 

221 — ccccxxxviii.  Dated  '  1852.' 

222 — ccccxxxix.  Dated  '  Bryn  Rhedyn,  1854.' 

CCCCXL.  This  pathetic  sonnet  forms  the  epilogue  to  the  author's 
Vioknzia,  a  very  noble  tragedy  published  anonymously  in  1851,  of 
which  his  biographer,  writing  nearly  ten  years  later,  said  with  per- 
fect truth  that,  excepting  Kingsley's  Saint's  T^-agedy,  no  drama 
which  had  appeared  since  the  publication  of  Shelley's  Ccncl  was 
worthy  to  be  compared  to  it  in  power  and  beauty.  L.  5.  while  : 
'  white '(1851  and  i860).  I  trust  it  may  be  regarded  simply  as  an 
error  of  judgment  if  I  have  erred  in  acting  on  the  belief  that  the 
poet's  alteration  of  xvhile  to  '  white  '  in  the  margin  of  his  proof-sheet 
(which  I  have  had  the  opportunity  of  examining)  was  unintentional. 

220-222— CCCCXXXV-CCCCXL.    From  Poems  and  Essays  by  the  late  Wil- 
liam  Caldwell  Roscoe.     Edited,  zvith  a  Prefatory  Memoir,  by  his 
BrotJier-in-law,  Richard  Holt  Htitton  :  i860. 

|am£S  ^ramuioitb  ^urits. 

223 — CCCCXLI.  Written  at  Hastings,  in  the  autumn  of  i860.  From 
Memoir  and  Reinains  of  the  Rev.  James  D.  Bums,  M.A.,of  Hamp- 
stead.    By  the  late  Rev.  James  Hamilton,  D.D.:  1869. 

CCCCXLil.  This  profoundly  impressive  sonnet — 3rd  in  a  group  of 


Notes  445 

PAGE 

five  titled  as  below — is  at  an  obvious  disadvantage  isolated  from  its 
fellows,  especially  the  ist  and  2nd  of  the  group,  which  are  there- 
fore subjoined  {^Poetical  Works,  ii,  354)  : 

TO  18b  2. 

(in    prospect  of   war    with    AMERICA.) 
«  I. 

Oh  worst  of  years,  by  what  signs  shall  we  know 

So  dire  an  advent  ?     Let  thy  New-Year's-day 

Be  night.     At  the  east  gate  let  the  sun  lay 

His  crown  :  as  thro'  a  temple  hung  with  woe 

Unkinged  by  mortal  sorrow  let  him  go 

Down  the  black  noon,  whose  wan  astrology 

Peoples  the  skyey  windows  with  dismay. 

To  that  dark  charnel  in  the  west  where  lo  ! 

The  mobled  Moon  !     For  so,  at  the  dread  van 

Of  wars  like  ours,  the  great  humanity 

In  things  not  human  should  be  wrought  and  wrung 

Into  our  sight,  and  creatures  without  tongue 

By  the  dumb  passion  of  a  visible  cry 

Confess  the  coming  agony  of  Man. 


Even  now,  this  spring  in  winter,  like  some  young 

Fair  Babe  of  Empire,  ere  his  birth-bells  ring, 

Shewn  to  the  people  by  a  hoary  King, 

Stirs  me  with  omens.     What  fine  shock  hath  sprung 

The  fairy  mines  of  buried  life  among 

The  clods  ?     Above  spring's  flow'rs  a  bird  of  spring 

Makes  Februaiy  of  the  winds  that  sing 

Yule-chants  :  while  March,  thro'  Christmas  brows,  rime-hung, 

Looks  violets  :  and  on  yon  grave-like  knoll 

A  girlish  season  sheds  her  April  soul. 

Ah  is  this  day  that  strains  the  exquisite 

Strung  sense  to  finer  fibres  of  delight 

An  aimless  sport  of  Time  ?     Or  do  its  show'rs 

Smiles,  birds  and  blooms  Betray  the  heart  of  conscious  Pow'rs? 

From  this  2nd  I  have  taken  the  liberty  of  borrowing  a  word  as  a 

title  for  the  sonnet  in  the  text. 
224-225 — CCCCXLIII-CCCCXLV.      Sonnets  on  the    War.     By  Alexander 

Smith,  and  by  the  author  of  ''Balder  '  and  '  The  Roman:  '  1855. 
223-225 — ccccxLii-ccccxLVi.   From  the  posthumous  collection  of  his 

Poetical   Works,   with  Introductory  Notice  and  Metnoir  by  "John 

Nichol,  M.A.  Oxon.  LL.D.,  2  vols.,  1875. 
Out  of  several  beautiful  tributes  that  have  been  paid  inverse  to  Do- 
bell's  memory,  I  select   the  following  sonnet  by  his   friend  Professor 
Blackie,  which  appeared  in    The   Scotsman  newspaper  (issue  of  15th 
September,  1874)  shortly  after  the  poet's  death. 


44^  Notes 

TO   THE  MEMORY  OF  SYDNEY  DOBELL. 
And  thou,  too,  gone  !  one  more  bright  soul  away 
To  swell  the  mighty  sleepers  'neath  the  sod  ; 
One  less  to  honour  and  to  love,  and  say. 
Who  lives  with  thee  doth  live  half-way  to  God. 
My  chaste-souled  Sydney  !  thou  wert  carved  too  fine 
For  coarse  observance  of  the  general  eye  ; 
But  who  might  look  into  thy  soul's  fair  shrine 
Saw  bright  gods  there,  and  felt  their  presence  nigh. 
O  !  if  we  owe  warm  thanks  to  Heaven,  'tis  when 
In  the  slow  progress  of  the  struggling  years 
Our  touch  is  blest  to  feel  the  pulse  of  men 
Who  walk  in  light  and  love  above  their  peers 
White-robed,  and  forward  point  with  guiding  hand. 
Breathing  a  heaven  around  them  where  they  stand  ! 

Johji  Stuart  Blackie. 

Portimcr  €oIIhts. 

PAGE 

226 — CCCCXLVII.  Yxora.\v\'i  Summer  Songs  :  i860. 

The  writer  on  the  Sonnet  repeatedly  quoted  above  makes  the  remark 
{Dublin  Review,  Jan.,  1877,  p.  179)  :  '  We  believe  we  are  correct  in 
stating  that  no  sonnet  has  ever  graced  the  pages  of  our  witty  contempo- 
rary Punch;  '  and  he  adds  in  a  foot-note  :  '  The  spell  has  at  last  been 
broken.  Mr.  Punch,  we  learn,  has  at  length  joined  the  rank  of  son- 
neteers. His  first  essay  in  this  line,  we  believe,  appears  in  the  number 
for  June  17th,  1876,  three  "  Sonnets  for  the  Sex,"  strictly  regular  and 
Petrarchan  in  form.'  This,  as  a  friend  points  out  to  me,  is  not  strictly 
accurate.  A  sonnet,  the  germ  of  the  charming  triad  named — in  which  it 
was  not  difficult  to  detect  the  deft  hand  of  Mortimer  Collins  (see  his 
Letters,  &c.,  1877,  ii,  igo) — had  appeared  in  that  journal  as  far  back  as 

December,  1846.     See  Punch,  vol.  xi,  p.  237. 

»i 

|ulran  Jfaitc. 

The  Hon.  Julian  Fane's  sonnets  are  close  and  masterly  imitations  of 
Shakspeare's,  which,  his  biographer  Lord  Lytton  informs  us,  '  he  loved 
and  studied,  till  he  became  saturated  with  the  spirit  of  them.'  I  subjoin 
an  example  of  Fane's  sonnet-work,  written  before  he  had  abandoned  the 
Petrarcan  for  the  Shakspearian  method.  Lord  Lytton  (Memoir,  p.  45) 
questions  '  if  it  be  possible  to  select  from  the  boyish  versification  of  any 
man  whose  name  is  not  recorded  amongst  those  of  acknowledged  poets, 
a  specimen  of  verse  more  chastened  in  expression,  or  more  carefully 
completed  in  form.'  {Poems,  Second  Edition,  with  additional  Poems, 
1852,  p.  27) : 


Notes  447 

TO    A    CANARY-BIRD, 

TRAINED   TO    DRAW   SEED    AND  WATER    FROM    A    GLASS-WELL 
SUSPENDED   TO   ITS   CAGE. 

Thou  should'st  be  carolling  thy  Maker's  praise, 
.    Poor  bird  !  now  fetter'd,  and  here  set  to  draw, 
With  graceless  toil  of  beak  and  added  claw. 
The  meagre  food  that  scarce  thy  want  allays  ! 
And  this — to  gratify  the  gloating  gaze 
Of  fools,  who  value  Nature  not  a  straw, 
But  know  to  prize  the  infraction  of  her  law 
And  hard  perversion  of  her  creature's  ways  ! 
Thee  the  wild  woods  await,  in  leaves  attired. 
Where  notes  of  liquid  utterance  should  engage 
Thy  bill,  that  now  with  pain  scant  forage  earns  ; 
So  art  thou  like  that  bard  who,  God-inspired 
To  charm  the  world  with  song,  was  set  to  gauge 
Beer-barrels  for  his  bread — half-famish'd  Burns  ! 

PAGE 

226— CCCCXLVlli.     The  3rd  of  a  series  of  four  sonnets  dated  Vienna. 

227 — CCCCXLIX.  The  1st  of  a  series  of  six  dated  London. 
ccccL.   The  last  of  a  series  of  six  dated  Vienna. 

228 — ccccLi.  It  will  be  observed  that  this  sonnet  contains  only  thirteen 
lines. 

CCCCLI-CCCCLH.  Dated  London.  A  melancholy  interest  attaches 
to  these  two  beautiful  tributes  of  filial  love,  from  their  having  been 
written  by  the  poet  during  the  agony  of  mortal  illness.  '  On  the 
evening  of  the  12th  of  March,  1870,'  writes  Lord  Lytton  (p.  291), 
'  his  physical  suffering  was  excessive.  The  following  day  was  the 
birthday  of  his  mother.  That  day  had  never  yet  dawned  upon  a 
deeper  sorrow  than  it  now  reawakened  in  the  soul  of  her  he  loved  so 
well.  For  the  first  time  in  all  the  long  course  of  their  tender  inter- 
course she  could  not  look  forward  to  that  accustomed  and  treasured 
tribute  of  dedicated  song  wherewith  her  son  had  never  yet  failed  to 
honour  the  advent  of  this  day.  Yet  she  found  what  she  dared  not, 
could  not,  anticipate.  There  lay  upon  her  table,  when  she  rose  on 
that  saddest  of  all  her  birthday  anniversaries,  a  letter  in  the  old 
beloved  hand-writing  ;  which,  with  a  few  simple  utterances  of 
devoted  affection,  contained  the  two  following  sonnets.  They  are 
the  last  words  ever  written  by  Julian  Fane.  But  this  golden  chain 
of  votive  verse  into  which  from  his  earliest  years  he  had  woven,  with 
religious  devotion,  the  annual  record  of  a  lifelong  affection,  was  not 
broken  till  life  itself  had  left  the  hand  that  wrought  it.' 

226-228— CCCCXLVlli— ccccLii.  Yrom  J uHan  Fane.     A  Mefttoir.     By 
Robert  Lytton  :  1 8  7 1 . 

229 — CCCCLIV.  With  the  modern  sonnet  compare  the  following  piece  of 


448  Notes 

PAGE 

quaint  old  handiwork  by  Dr.  Giles  Fletcher,  father  of  the  famous 
Giles,  which  may  be  -  regarded  as  its  Elizabethan  correlative. 
'  Marlowe  himself, 'says  his  editor,  '  might  have  written  the  twelfth 
verse.'     {Licia,  1593,  Son.  12,  ed.  Grosart,  1876) : 

I  wish  sometimes,  although  a  worthlesse  thing, 
Spurd  by  ambition,  glad  for  to  aspyre. 
My  selfe  a  Monarch,  or  some  mightie  King  : 
And  then  my  thoughtes  doe  wish  for  to  be  hyer. 
But  when  I  view  what  windes  the  Cedars  tosse. 
What  stormes  men  feele  that  covet  for  renowne, 
I  blame  my  selfe  that  I  have  wisht  my  losse, 
And  scorne  a  kingdome,  though  it  give  a  crowne. 
Ah  !  Licia  thou,  the  wonder  of  my  thought, 
My  heartes  content,  procurer  of  my  blisse. 
For  whom  a  crowne  I  doe  esteeme  as  nought. 
And  Asias  wealth  too  meane  to  buy  a  kisse  : 
Kisse  me,  sweete  love,  this  favour  doe  for  me. 
Then  Crownes  and  Kingdomes  shall  I  scorne  for  thee. 

Giles  Fletcher, 
229-230 — CCCCLIII-CCCCLV.  From  his  Poems  :  1853. 

CCCCLVi.  Surprised  to  tears. .  '  Flatter'd  to  tears  '  (Keats's  Eve  of 
St.  Agnes,  iii,  3).  This  fine  sonnet  is  one  of  Smith's  contributions 
to  the  little  pamphlet,  Sonnets  on  the  War,  published  by  him  and 
Dobell  in  1855. 

^aHit   ^rag. 

These  selections  from  David  Gray — with  William  Caldwell  Roscoe, 

and  Oliver  Madox  Brown  later,  the  most  deeply  deplored  since  Keats  of 

*  Those  dying  hearts  that  come  to  go, 
And  sing  their  swan-song  flying  home ' — 

are  from  his  only  volume.  The  Luggie  and  Other  Poems.  With  a  Memoir 
by  James  Hedderwick,  and  a  Prefatory  Notice  by  R.  M.  Milnes,  AI.P. — 
Cambridge  :  1862  ;  of  which  a  second  and  enlarged  edition,  without 
the  Memoir,  was  published  by  Mr.  Maclehose,  Glasgow,  in  1874. 

PAGE 

232 — CCCCLIX,  10.  A  recollection  of  In  Memoriam,  Liv — and,  I  pre- 
sume, an  instance  of  that  '  direct  and  seemingly  unconscious  trans- 
ference of  some  of  the  best  known  lines  or  phrases  from  such  ob- 
scure authors  as  Shakespeare  and  Wordsworth  into  the  somewhat 
narrow  and  barren  field  of  his  own  verse,'  which  Mr.  Swinburne 
contemptuously  asserts  to  be  one  of  the  two  most  remarkable  points 
in  the  '  poor  little  book'  of  this  '  poor  young  Scotchman  '  !  {Essays 
and  Studies,  1875,  p.  153,  foot-note). 

ccccLX,  I.  Cp.  Tennyson's  Princess  (p.  79,  4th  ed.,  1851) : 


Notes  449 

PAGE 

'  Delaying  as  the  tender  ash  delays 
To  clothe  herself,  when  all  the  woods  are  green.' 

This  sonnet  was  addressed  to  his  brother-poet,  Robert  Buchanan. 
See  Mr.  Buchanan's  David  Gray,  and  Other  Essays,  i86S,  p.  117. 
233 — CCCCLXII.   There  is  something  infinitely  touching  in  the  fondness 
with  which  young  poets  passing  through  '  the  shadows  '  have  looked 
to  this  little  flower  as  the  emblem  of  hope  for  them.     One  of  our 
latest  '  inheritors  of  unfulfilled  renown '  thus  glorifies  it  in  sonnet- 
form   ( The  Life  of  a  Scottish  Probationer :   being  a  Memoir  of 
Thomas  Davidson.    IVith  his  Poems  and  Extracts  from  his  Letters. 
By  Dr.  James  Brown,  of  Paisley :   1878,  2nd  ed.,  p.  226) : 
A  SICK  MAN  TO  THE  EARLIEST  SNOWDROP. 
From  off  the  chill  and  misty  lower  verge 
Of  Autumn,  when  the  flowers  were  all  gone  past, 
Looks,  that  were  prayers,  o'er  Winter  I  did  cast. 
To  see  beyond  thy  fancied  form  emerge  : 
Thy  advent  was  my  dream,  while  storms  did  surge, 
And  if  Hope  walked  with  me  'tween  blast  and  blast. 
With  phantom  Snowdrops  her  pale  brows  were  graced. 
And  now  thy  presence  and  my  heart's  fulness  urge 
This  word  of  hail  to  thee.  Emblem  of  meekness, — 
Yet  in  thy  meekness  brave  and  militant. 
Leading  flower-armies  from  the  bloomy  South, 
Hard  on  the  heels  of  Frost  and  Cold  and  Bleakness  ! 
O  when  I  spied  thee  in  this  yearly  haunt 
'  Life  !  Life  !  I  shall  not  die  ! '  brake  from  my  mouth. 

Thomas  Davidson. 

It  was  probably  the  reference  in  the  text  to  the  snowdrop  that  sug- 
gested the  exquisitely  tender  episode  in  Mr.  Buchanan's  Poet  Andrew, 
which  manifestly  depicts  the  brief  sad  life  of  David  Gray.  Age  cannot 
wither  such  poetry  as  that  in  which  Andrew's  father,  the  simple-hearted 
handloom  weaver,  tells  the  story  of  his  son's  death  {Ldyls  and  Legends 

of  Inverbum,  1865,  p.  59) : 

*  One  Sabbath  day— 
The  last  of  winter,  for  the  caller  air 
W^as  drawing  sweetness  from  the  bark  of  trees — 
When  down  the  lane,  I  saw  to  my  surprise 
A  snowdrop  blooming  underneath  a  birk. 
And  gladly  pluckt  the  flower  to  carry  home 
To  Andrew. 

•  •  •  •  • 

Saying  nought. 
Into  his  hand  I  put  the  year's  first  flower. 
And  turn'd  awa'  to  hide  my  face  ;  and  he  . . 
. .  He  smiled,  .and  at  the  smile,  I  know  not  why, 
It  swam  upon  us  in  a  frosty  pain. 
The  end  was  come  at  last,  at  last,  and  Death 
Was  creeping  ben,  his  shadow  on  our  hearts. 

DD 


45©  Notes 

We  gazed  on  Andrew,  call'd  him  by  his  name, 

And  touch'd  him  softly  .  .  and  he  lay  awhile, 

His  een  upon  the  snow,  in  a  dark  dream. 

Yet  neither  heard  nor  saw  ;  but  suddenly. 

He  shook  awa'  the  vision  wi'  a  smile. 

Raised  lustrous  een,  still  smiling,  to  the  sky, 

Next  upon  us,  then  dropt  them  to  the  flower 

That  trembled  in  his  hand,  and  murmur'd  low, 

Like  one  that  gladly  murmurs  to  himsel' — 

"  Out  of  the  Snow,  the  Snowdrop — out  of  Death 

Comes  Life  ;  "  then  closed  his  eyes  and  made  a  moan. 

And  never  spake  another  word  again.' 

The  following  tribute  in  sonnet-form  to  David  Gray's  memory  from 
the  pen  of  another  living  writer,  originally  printed  in  Hedderwick's  Mis- 
cellany, 7  March,  1863,  will  fittingly  close  our  selection  from  Luggie's 
poet.  {A  Scholar  s  Day-Dream,  Sonnets,  and  Other  Poems,  1870,  p.  190): 

IN    MEMORIAM' 

DAVID   GRAY.' 

Oh,  rare  young  soul  !     Thou  wast  of  such  a  mould 
As  could  not  bear  the  poet's  painful  dower  ! 
Hence,  in  the  sweet  spring-tide  of  opening  power, 
Ere  yet  the  gathering  breeze  of  song  had  roll'd 
Out  on  the  world  its  music  manifold, 
Death  gently  hushed  the  harp,  lest  storm  or  shower — 
Which  surely  life  had  brought  some  later  hour — 
Should  snap  the  quivering  strings  or  dim  their  gold. 
Yet  not  the  less  shall  tender  memories  dwell 
In  those  sweet  notes — and  sad  as  sweet  they  seem — 
Which  from  the  burning  touch  of  boyhood  fell ; 
For  long  as  little  Luggie  winds  her  stream. 
And  the  twin  Bothlin  prattles  down  the  dell. 
Thither  shall  many  a  pilgrim  turn  and  dream  ! 

Alsager  Hay  Hill. 

(Dlikr  p[a:tJo«  l^rofoit. 

PAGE 

234 — CCCCLXIII.  descries  :  used  in  the  old  sense  =  marks,  points  out. 
From  The  Dwale  Bliith,  Hebditch's  Legacy,  and  other  Literary 
Feniains  of  Oliver  Madox  Brorvn,  Author  of^Gabiiel  Denver.' 
Edited  by  William  M.  Rossetti  and  F.  Hueffer.  With  a  Memoir  and 
Two  Portraits  :  1876.  The  editors  note  that  the  sonnet  was  found 
prefixed  to  the  first  MS.  of  '  The  Black  Swan,'  a  tale  written  in  the 
winter  of  1871-2  and  published  in  an  altered  form  under  the  title 
of  'Gabriel  Denver,' in  1873;  and  that  there  were  duplicate  readings 
to  several  of  the  lines.  They  record  also  that  even  some  years 
earlier,  while  in  his  fourteenth  year,  and  before  it  had  ever  been 
supposed  by  his  family  that  he  so  much  as  understood  the  meaning 


Notes 


451 


of  the  word  sonnet,  this  truly  '  marvellous  boy  '  had  produced  a 
number  of.  sonnets,  which  he  unfortunately  destroyed  'in  a  fit  of 
morbid  irritability  or  bashfulness  caused  by  their  being  shown  to  a 
few  friends.'  One  of  these,  however,  written  for  a  picture  by  Mrs. 
Stillman  (then  Miss  Spartali),  and  printed  on  the  gilt  of  the  frame, 
has  survived.     It  is  as  follows  : — 

Leaning  against  the  window,  rapt  in  thought. 

Of  what  sweet  past  do  thy  soft  brown  eyes  dream, 

That  so  expressionlessly  sweet  they  seem  ? 

Or  what  great  image  hath  thy  fancy  wrought 

To  wonder  round  and  gaze  at  ?  or  doth  aught 

Of  legend  move  thee,  o'er  which  eyes  oft  stream, 

Telling  of  some  sweet  saint  who  rose  supreme 

From  martyrdom  to  God,  with  glory  fraught  ? 

Or  art  thou  listening  to  the  gondolier, 

Whose  song  is  dying  o'er  the  waters  wide, 

Trying  the  faintly-sounding  tune  to  hear 

Before  it  mixes  with  the  rippling  tide  ? 

Or  dost  thou  think  of  one  that  comes  not  near, 

And  whose  false  heart,  in  thine,  thine  own  doth  chide? 


I 


©nir  of  tlje  'gottB 


INDEX    OF    AUTHORS 


WITH    DATES     OF    BIRTH    AND    DEATH 


The  Roman  numerals  denote  the  numbers  in  the  Text,  the  figures  the 
pages  of  the  Notes. 


Alexander,  William,  Earl  of  Sterline  (1580 — 1640)  322,  323 
Alford,  Henry  (1810 — 1871)  ccccxix— ccccxx 
Ayton,  Robert  (1570 — 1638)  323 

BAMPFYLDE.John  Codrington  Warwick  (1754 — 1796)  393,  394 

Barnes,  Barnabe  (1568-g — 1609)  cviu — cix,  277,  284,  299,  305,  306 

Barnfield,  Richard  (1574 — 1627)  300 

Beaumont.  John  (1582-3 — 1627)  247 

Beddoes,  Thomas  Lovell  (1803 — 1849)  CCCXLVII 

Bell,  Henry  Glassford  (1805 — 1874)  CCCLVII — ccCLvm 

Best,  Charles  (temp.  Elizabeth)  254 

Blanchard,  Samuel  Laman  (1804 — 1845)  cccxLViii — cccl 

Bowles,  William  Lisle  (1762— 1850)  clxx— clxxii,  363 

Breton,  Nicholas  (1555 — 1624)  302 

Brown,  Oliver  Madox  (1855—1874)  ccccLXiii,  451 

Browne,  William'  (1588  ?— 1643  ?)  cxxxiii— cxxxv,  273,  333,  334,  335 

Browning,  Elizabeth  Barrett  (1809— 1861)  cccxcvii— ccccxviii 

Brydges,  Samuel  Egerton  (1762 — 1837)  CLXix 

Burns,  James  Drummond  (1823— 1864)  ccccxli 

Byron,  George  Gordon  Noel  (1788—1824)  cclxiii 

Chapman,  George  (1557 — 1634)  xl,  263 

Clare,  John  (1793—1864)  cclxxxiv — ccxciii 

Clarke,  Charles  Cowden  (1787 — 1877)  418 

Clough,  Arthur  Hugh  (1819— 1861)  ccccxxxiii 

Coleridge,  Hartley  (1796-1849)  cccxvii— cccxxxiv,  427,  428,  431 

Coleridge,  Samuel  Taylor  (1772— 1834)  ccxxxvi— ccxxxix,  362,  391 

Coleridge,  Sara  (1803 — 1852)  399 

Collins,  Mortimer  (1827— 1876)  ccccxLVii 

Constable,  Henry  (1555  ?— 1610  ?)  xxxv— xxxviii,  259 

CowPER,  William  (1731— 1800)  clxiii,  357 

453 


AC  A  Index  of  Authors 

Daniel,  Samuel  (1562 — 1619)  xliv — xlvi,  269,  283,  294 
Davies,  John,  of  Hereford  (1560-5 — 1618)  cvii,  284,  302 
Davidson,  Ihomas  (1838 — 1870)  449 
De  Vere,  Kwhx^y^ater  (1788 — 1846)  CCLIX — CCLXII 
DoBELL,  Sydney  Thompson  {1824 — 1874)  CCCCXLII — CCCCXLVI,  445 
Donne,  John  (1573 — 1631)  ex — cxi 

Doubleday,  Thomas  (1790 — 1870)  CCLXVI — CCLXVII,  356 
Drayton,  Michael  (1563 — 1631)  xlvii — xLviii,  273,  274,  275 
Drummond,  William  (1585 — 1649)  cxii— cxxxii,  290,  316,  318,  324,  327,  328,  331, 
332)  432 

Edwards,  Thomas  (1699 — 1757)  cliv,  351,  352 
Elliott,  Ebenezer  (1781 — 1849)  ecu — ceLii,  402 

Faber,  Frederick  William  (1814 — 1863)  eeccxxvii — ccccxxxi 
Fane,  Julian  Charles  Henry  (1827 — 1870)  eceexLViii — cccclii,  447 
Fletcher,  GW^'i— pater  (1548  ? — 1610-11)  448 
Florid,  John  (1553 — 1625)  xxvi 
Forster,  John  (1812 — 1876)  ccccxxxii 

Gray,  David  (1838 — 1861)  ceccLvii — ccecLXii 
Gray,  Thomas  (1716 — 1771)  eLVi 
Greene,  Robert  (1561  ? — 1592)  xlii — xliii 
Greville,  Fulke,  Lord  Brooke  (1554 — 1628)  320,  321 
Griffin,  Bartholomew  (? — 1602)  270 

Habington,  William  (1605— 1645)  cxxxvii 

Hallam,  Arthur  Henry  (1811 — 1833)  ccccxxi — ccecxxvi 

Hamilton,  William  Rowan  (1805 — 1865)  cceLV — ccclvi,  293 

Harvey,  Gabriel  (1545 — 1630)  266 

Hawker,  Robert  Stephen  (1804 — 1875)  cccli — cecLiv 

Hemans,  Felicia  Dorothea  (1794 — 1835)  cexeiv — cexcviu 

Herbert,  George  (1593 — 1633)  cxxxvi,  336 

Herrick,  Robert  (1591 — 1674)  255 

Hood,  Thomas  (1798 — 1845)  eccxxxvi — cccxLi 

Howard,  Henry,  Earl  of  Surrey  (1516? — 1547)  m — vii 

HuNTjJames  Henry  Leigh  (1784 — 1859)  cenv,  403,  410 

Irving,  Edward  (1792 — 1834)  ceLxxx 

Jackson,  William  (1757 — 1789)  415 
Johnston,  Charles  (1791 — 1823)  cccxxxv 
JoNSON,  Ben  (1574 — 1637)  263 

Keats,  John  (1795—1821)  ccxcix— ccexi,  409,  417,  420 

KEBLE,John  (1792 — 1866)  CCLXXXI — CCLXXXIII 

KiNGSLEY,  Charles  (1819— 1875)  eeecxxxiv 

Lamb,  Charles  (1775— 1834)  ccxlii— ccxlv,  395 
Lodge,  Thomas  (1556  ? — 1625)  xxxix,  261 

Mason,  William  (1725 — 1797)  clvii 

Milton,  John  (1608 — 1674)  cxxxviii— cliii,  341 

Montgomery,  Alexander  (1535  ? — 1605  ?)  326,  329 


I 


Index  of  Authors  acc 


Moultrie,  John  (1799— 1874)  cccxLii  i 

MoxoN,  Edward  (1801 — 1858)  397 

Norton,  Hon.  Mrs.  (under  Stirling-Maxwell) 

PoLWHELE,  Richard  (1760 — 1838)  401 

Procter,  Bryan  Waller  (1790— 1S74)  ccLXvni— cclxxi,  296,  409  ^ 

I 
Raleigh,  Walter  (1552 — 1618)  xxv,  245 
Ranke,  Helena  Clarissa  von  (1808 — 1871)  CCCLX 

RoscoE,  Robert  (1789 — 1850)  ccLXiv— CCLXV  | 

RoscoE,  William  (1753—1831)  CLXvii 

RoscoE,  William  Caldwell  (1823— 1859)  ccccxxxv— CCCCXL,  443,  444  I 

RoscoE,  William  Stanley  (1782 — 1843)  ccLiii 
Russell,  Thomas  (1762— 1788)  clxxiii— clxxiv,  365 

Seward,  Anna  (1747 — 1809)  clxiv 

Shakspeare,  William  (1564 — 1616)  l — cvi  ; 

Shelley,  Percy  Bysshe  (1792— 1822)  CCLXXII— CCLXXIX,  410,411  I 

Sidney,  Philip  (1554— 1586)  xxvii—xxxiv,  254,  256  < 

Smith,  Alexander  (1830 — 1867)  ccccLiii— ccccLvi  J 

Smith,  Charlotte  (1749 — 1806)  clxv — clxvi,  359  ! 

Smith,  Horace  (1779 — 1849)  ccxLvii  ] 

Southey,  Robert  (1774 — 1843)  ccxli  | 

Spenser,  Edmund  (1552?— 1599)  viii— xxiv,  241,  24.3,  344  ^ 

Sterling,  John  (i8o5 — 1844)  ccclix,  436 

Stillingfleet,  Benjamin  (1702 — 1771)  CLV,  353 

Stirling-Maxwell,  Caroline  Elizabeth  Sarah  (1808— 1877)  360  i 

Strong,  Charles  (1785 — 1864)  cclvii 

Sylvester,  Joshua  (1563— 1618)  xlix,  276,  277  : 

Talfourd,  Thomas  Noon  (179s — 1854)  cccxiii — cccxvi,  425 

Tennyson,  Charles  (under  Turner) 

Thurlow,  Edward  Hovel  (1781— 1829)  ccxLviii— CCL,  252 

Tighe,  Mary  (1773 — 1810)  CCXL,  392 

TowNSHEND,  Chauncy  Hare  (1800— 1868)  cccxLiii 

Turner,  Charles.Tennyson  (1808— 1879)  ccclxi— cccxcvi,  387,  388 

Walker,  William  Sidney  (1795 — 1846)  cccxii  • 

Warton,  Thomas  (1728 — 1790)  CLViii — clxii,  356  : 

Watson,  Thomas  (1560 — 1592)  xli,  265 

White,  Henry  Kirke  (1785 — 1806)  CCLV — CCLVI  j 

White,  Joseph  Blanco  (1775—1841)  ccxlvi,  398  ^! 

Williams,  Helen  Maria  (1762 — 1828)  clxviii  ' 

Williams,  Isaac  (1802 — 1865)  cccxliv — cccxlvi 

Wilson,  John  (1785 — 1854)  cclviii  ! 

Wither,  George  (1588— 1667)  322  i 

Wordsworth,  William  (1770— 1850)  clxxv— ccxxxv,  370,  372,  375,  376,  377,  378, 

381,  382,  383,  384,  3S9  .                                                                j 

Wyat,  Thomas  (1503 — 1542)  i — 11  \ 


Anonymous  :  239,  246,  247,  250,  301,  307,  330 


(mC-^ 


INDEX   OF   LIVING   WRITERS 


INCIDENTALLY    REPRESENTED    IN   THE   NOTES 


Alexander,  Patrick  Proctor    - 

Allingham,  William 

Arnold,  Matthew  -  .  . 

Blackie,  John  Stuart 

BuRBiDGE,  Thomas         .  .  . 

De  Verb,  Aubrey    -  -,  - 

DowDEN,  Edward  -  .  . 

Ellison,  Henry         ... 

Garnett,  Richard         .  .  . 

Graves,  Alfred  Perceval    - 

Hanmer,  Lord    -  .  .  . 

Hill,  Alsager  Hay     -  -  . 

Myers,  Ernest    -  .  -  . 

Noble,  James  Ashcroft 

Patmore,  Coventry  Kearsey  Dighton 

RosSETTi,  Christina  Gabriela 
ROSSETTI,  Dante  Gabriel 

Sutton,  Henry  Septimus     - 

Tennyson,  Alfred  ... 

Tennyson,  Frederick 
Todhunter,  John  ... 

Trench,  Richard  Cbenevix 

Watson,  William 

Anonymous  ... 


page 

-  367 

408 

-  427 

446 

-  430 

405,  406 

-  387 

414 


373 

421 

- 

422 

- 

390 

- 

450 

- 

381 

# 

441 

- 

429 

- 

292 

346, 

374 

404 

- 

430 

- 

380 

- 

440 

319. 

342. 

431 

- 

430 

293. 

342 

• 

419 

INDEX  OF  FIRST  LINES  " 


Those  in  the  Notes  are  distinguished  by  an  Asterisk 


Abbey  !  for  ever  smiling  pensively 
Accuse  me  not,  beseech  thee,  that  I  wear 
Accuse  me  thus  :  that  I  have  scanted  all 
A  cloud  lay  cradled  near  the  setting  sun  - 
A  flock  of  sheep  that  leisurely  pass  by 
Against  my  Love  shall  be,  as  I  am  now   - 
Again  the  violet  of  our  early  days 
Again  thou  reignest  in  thy  golden  hall     - 

*A  gentle  shepherd,  borne  in  Arcadye  - 
A  good  that  never  satisfies  the  mind 
Ah  !  burning  thoughts,  now  let  me  take  some  rest 
Ah,  sweet  Content,  where  is  thy  mild  abode  ?     - 
A  hundred  wings  are  dropt  as  soft  as  one 
Ah  1  what  a  weary  race  my  feet  have  run 
Alas  !  that  sometimes  even  a  duteous  life 
Alas,  'tis  true  I  have  gone  here  and  there 
Alexis,  here  she  stayed  ;  among  these  pines  - 
All  are  not  taken  ;  there  are  left  behind  - 

*A11  praise  the  Likeness  by  thy  skill  portrayed 

*A11  ye  who  far  from  town,  in  rural  hall    - 

*Amen  !  my  brave  old  friend,  to  all  thy  prayer 
And,  O  beloved  voices,  upon  which 

*And  thou,  too,  gone  !  one  more  bright  soul  away 

*And  to  the  Father  of  Eternal  days 
Another  year  ! — another  deadly  blow  ! 
A  plaintive  sonnet  flowed  from  Milton's  pen 
A  rose,  as  fair  as  ever  saw  the  North  - 
Around  man's  hearth  his  dearest  blessings  meet 
Art  thou  a  type  of  beauty,  or  of  power 
As  due  by  many  titles,  I  resign     -  .  . 

*As  late  I  rambled  in  the  happy  fields 
As  one  dark  morn  I  trod  a  forest  glade     - 
As  one  who,  destined  from  his  friends  to  part 

*As  one  whose  eyes  have  watched  the  stricken  day 
As  on  my  bed  at  dawn  I  mused  and  prayed  - 


PAGE 

-  128 

209 

-  50 
131 

-  94 
36 

-  128 
129 

-  335 

63 

-  S8 
55 

-  185 

83 

-  214 

49 

-  61 
202 

-  376 
394 

-  419 
205 

-  446 
402 

-  109 

81 

-  68 
177 

-  132 

56 

-  420 
189 

-  86 

293 

-  189 


457 


Ac^  Index  of  First  Lines 

PAGE 

As  thus  oppressed  with  many  a  heavy  care         ...            -  130 

As  when  it  happeneth  that  some  lovely  town              -            -            -  -      66 

As  winter,  in  some  mild  autumnal  days  -  ...  -  220 
A  trouble,  not  of  clouds,  or  weeping  rain        .....     114 

Avenge„0  Lord,  thy  slaughtered  saints,  whose  bones   -            -            -  75 

A  volant  Tribe  of  Bards  on  earth  are  found     -            -            -            -  -      97 

A  wrinkled,  crabbed  man  they  picture  thee        ....  123 

Beauty  still  walketh  on  the  earth  and  air             ....  229 

Beauty,  sweet  Love,  is  like  the  morning  dew             -            -            -  -      23 

Because  I  breathe  not  love  to  every  one  .....  16 

Because  thou  wast  the  daughter  of  a  king       -            -            -            -  .20 

♦Behold  the  melancholy  season's  wane !     -            .            .            -            -  443 

Being  your  slave,  what  should  I  do  but  tend  -            -            -            -  -      3S 

♦Beneath  a  sable  vaile,  and  Shadowes  deepe         ....  328 

Be  not  afraid  to  pray — to  pray  is  right             ...            -  -     168 

Beyond  the  pine-wood  all  looked  bright  and  clear         ...  igo 
Blue!     'Tis  the  life  of  heaven, — the  domain  -----     156 

Brave  Schill  !  by  death  delivered,  take  thy  flight           -            -            -  log 

Bright  star  !  would  I  were  steadfast  as  thou  art          -            -             -  -     158 

Broad,  but  not  deep,  along  his  rock-chafed  bed  -            -            -            -  133 

Brook  !  whose  society  the  Poet  seeks  ------     100 

But  be  contented  :   when  that  fell  arrest  -----  40 

But  do  thy  worst  to  steal  thyself  away  -          -            -            -            -  -      43 

♦But  love  whilst  that  thou  maist  be  lov'd  againe  -            -            .            -  269 

♦But  one  short  week  ago  the  trees  were  bare   ....  -    431 

Cambridge,  with  whom,  my  pilot  and  my  guide  -            -            -            -  79 

Captain,  or  Colonel,  or  Knight  in  arms            -            -            -            -  -      7^ 

Care-charmer  Sleep,  son  of  the  sable  Night         ....  24 

♦Care-charmer  Sleepe,  sweet  ease  in  restles  miserie  -            -            -  -     270 

Child  of  the  clouds  !  remote  from  every  taint     -            .            .            -  iii 

♦Cleere  Ankor,  on  whose  Silver-sanded  shore              .            -            -  -    275 

Come,  Sleep,  O  Sleep  !  the  certain  knot  of  peace  -  -  -  15 
Could  I  but  harmonize  one  kindly  thought     -----     166 

♦Couldst  thou  in  calmness  yield  thy  mortal  breath          -            -            -  399 

♦Could  then  the  Babes  from  yon  unshelter'd  cot         -            -            -  -     S^S 

Cromwell,  our  chief  of  men,  who  through  a  cloud          -            -            -  74 

♦Cynthia,  whose  glories  are  at  full  for  ever      ...            -  -     320 

Cyriack,  this  three-years-day  these  eyes,  though  clear  -            -            -  77 

Cyriack,  whose  grandsire  on  the  royal  bench             -            -            -  -      7° 

Daughter  to  that  good  Earl,  once  President        ...            -  72 

♦Deare  Quirister,  who  from  those  Shadowes  sends     ...  -     316 

Dear  native  brook  1    wild  streamlet  of  the  West !            .            -            .  121 

Dear  to  the  Loves,  and  to  the  Graces  vowed  -            -            -            -  -     118 

Dear,  why  should  you  command  me  to  my  rest  -            -            -            -  24 

Dear  wood,  and  you,  sweet  solitary  place      -            -            -            -  -      60 

Death,  be  not  proud,  though  some  have  called  thee      -           -            -  56 

Deem  not  devoid  of  elegance  the  sage             -            -            -            -  -      82 

Degenerate  Douglas  !  oh,  the  unworthy  Lord  !  -            -            -            -  I04 

Dewint !  I  would  not  flatter,  nor  would  I      -           -           -           -  -     ^4^ 


Index  of  First  Lines  ^eq 

Die  down,  O  dismal  day  !  and  let  me  live  ....  233 

Divers  doth  use,  as  I  have  heard  and  know    -  -  ...        2 

Doth  then  the  world  go  thus,  doth  all  thus  move!  ...  66 

Down  in  a  valley,  by  a  forest's  side     .  .  .  -  .  -68 

♦Drowned  for  long  ages,  lost  to  human  reach       ....  387 


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Earth  has  not  anything  to  show  more  fair  -  .  .  .  .  100 
♦Earth  unto  Earth  is  now  returned  :  a  doom         .... 

Ere  yet  our  course  was  graced  with  social  trees         ... 

Eternal  and  Omnipotent  Unseen  1    .        -           .           .           .           .  126 

Eternal  Spirit  of  the  chainless  Mind  !  -          .           .            .•         .            .  134 

♦Even  now,  this  spring  in  winter,  like  some  young          ...  ^^5 

Even  thus,  methinks,  a  city  reared  should  be             ....  213 

♦Eve's  lingering  clouds  extend  in  solid  bars          ....  382 

Experience,  like  a  pale  musician,  holds          .....  204 

♦Eyther  the  goddesse  drawes  her  troupe  of  loves  .            ...  247 

Fair  art  thou,  Phyllis  ;  ay,  so  fair,  sweet  maid   ....  20 

♦Faire,  since  thy  Virtues  my  affections  move  .....  322 

Fairest,  when  by  the  rules  of  palmistry    .....  67 

Fairfax,  whose  name  in  arms  through  Europe  rings  .            .            -            -  73 

Fair  maid,  had  I  not  heard  thy  baby  cries           ....  165 

Fair  Star  of  evening.  Splendour  of  the  west    .....  104 

Farewell,  Love,  and  all  thy  laws  for  ever !           .            -            -            .  j 

Farewell  on  man's  dark  journey  o'er  the  deep            ....  1^2 

Farewell !  thou  art  too  dear  for  my  possessing    ....  41 

♦Far  from  all  measured  space,  yet  clear  and  plain      ....  428 

Far  from  the  sight  of  earth,  yet  bright  and  plain              ...  167 

Fixed  in  a  white-thorn  bush,  its  summer  guest           ....  145 

Flowers  !  when  the  Saviour's  calm,  benignant  eye         ...  14^ 

Fond  words  have  oft  been  spoken  to  thee.  Sleep  1       .            .            -            -  94 

Four  seasons  fill  the  measure  of  the  year  .....  154 
Fresh  Spring,  the  herald  of  love's  mighty  king           .            .            .            .11 

Friend  of  my  earliest  years  and  childish  days     ....  123 

From  low  to  high  doth  dissolution  climb        -            .            .            .            -  117 

♦From  off  the  chill  and  misty  lower  verge  .....  440 
From  Pembroke's  princely  dome,  where  mimic  Art  -            .           .           .81 

From  you  have  I  been  absent  in  the  spring          ....  45 

Full  many  a  glorious  morning  have  I  seen     -            .            .            .            -  32 

Full  often  as  I  rove  by  path  or  stile           .....  188 

♦Fye  foolish  Earth,  thinke  you  the  heaven  wants  glory         ...  320 

Gaily  and  greenly  let  my  seasons  run       .....  176 

Genius  and  its  rewards  are  briefly  told            .....  218 

Give  me  thy  joy  in  sorrow,  gracious  Lord           ....  174 

♦Give  pardon  (blessed  Soule)  to  my  bold  cryes           ....  259 

♦Glory  and  loveliness  have  passed  away   .....  420 

Green  little  vaulter  in  the  sunny  grass            .....  129 

Grief,  thou  hast  lost  an  ever  ready  friend  .....  95 

♦Had  Lucan  hid  the  truth  to  please  the  time        ....  245 

Happy  is  England  !  I  could  be  content          .....  154 


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Index  of  First  Lines 


Happy,  ye  leaves  !  whenas  those  lily  hands 
Hardly  we  breathe,  although  the  air  be  free  - 
Harry,  whose  tuneful  and  well-measured  song.   - 
Having  this  day  my  horse,  my  hand,  my  lance 
Hearken !  there  is  in  old  Morwenna's  shrine 
Hearken,  thou  craggy  ocean-pyramid  ! 
Heart  of  my  heart !  of  Love  let  us  commune 

*He  drew  it  home — he  heaved  it  to  the  bank  - 
Heed  not  a  world  that  neither  thee  can  keep 

*He  left  the  upland  lawns  and  serene  air 
Henceforward  shall  our  time  be  plainly  read 

*Here  sleeps  beneath  this  bank,  where  daisies  grow 
He  was  a  mild  old  man,  and  cherished  much 
High  is  our  calling.  Friend  ! — Creative  Art    - 

*Highway,  since  you  my  chiefe  Pernassus  be 
Hope  smiled  when  your  nativity  was  cast 
How  bravely  Autumn  paints  upon  the  sky 
How  can  my  Muse  want  subject  to  invent 
How  do  I  love  thee?     Let  me  count  the  ways    - 
How  like  a  winter  hath  my  absence  been 
How  like  the  leper,  with  his  own  sad  cry  - 

*How  long  I  sail'd,  and  never  took  a  thought  - 
How  many  blessed  groups  this  hour  are  bending 
How  must  the  soldier's  tearful  heart  expand  - 
How  oft,  when  thou,  my  music,  music  play'st    - 
How  peacefully  the  broad  and  golden  moon  - 
How  profitless  the  relics  that  we  cull 
How  softly  Summer's  breath  is  wafted  here   - 

*How  soft  the  pause  !  the  notes  melodious  cease  - 
How  soon  hath  Time,  the  subtle  thief  of  youth 

♦How  sweet  it  were  if,  without  feeble  fright 
How  sweet  the  tuneful  bells'  responsive  peal  ! 
Hung  on  the  shower  that  fronts  the  golden  West 


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I  am  not  One  who  much  or  oft  delight 
*I  am  not  to  instruct  where  I  may  learne  - 
*I  did  but  prompt  the  age  to  quit  their  cloggs 
*1  do  not  know  a  man  who  better  reads 
If  by  dull  rimes  our  English  must  be  chained 
Tf  crost  with  all  mishaps  be  my  poor  life  - 
*If  Cupid  keepe  his  quiver  in  thine  eye 
If  I  have  sinned  in  act,  I  may  repent 
If  I  leave  all  for  thee,  wilt  thou  exchange 
If  it  must  be  ;  if  it  must  be,  O  God  ! 
If  I  were  a  dead  leaf  thou  mightest  bear 
"'If  Musique  and  sweet  Poetrie  agree 
If  thou  must  love  me,  let  it  be  for  nought 
If  thou  survive  my  well-contented  day     - 
*I  grieved  for  Buonaparte,  with  a  vain 
I  have  a  circlet  of  thy  sunny  hair    - 
1  have  been  in  the  meadows  all  the  day 
I  know  that  all  beneath  the  moon  decays 


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Index  of  First  Lines  46 1  < 

FACE 

I  love  to  rise  ere  gleams  the  tardy  light  -  -  .  .  .84 

I  love  to  wander  at  my  idle  will    --....  i^g 

I  met  a  traveller  from  an  antique  land  -  -  .  -  -  138 

I  met  that  image  on  a  mirthful  day  -  .  .  .  .  150 

In  eddying  course  when  leaves  began  to  fly  -  -  -  -  -  87 

I  never  gave  a  lock  of  hair  away   -  -  -  -  -  .  210 

Inland,  within  a  hollow  vale,  I  stood   ---.-.  106 

*In  pride  of  Wit,  when  high  desire  of  Fame  ....  274 

In  summer-time  it  was  a  paradise        ......  icjt) 

*ln  that,  O  Queene  ofqueenes!  thy  byrth  was  free         .  .  -  259 

Into  God's  word,  as  in  a  palace  fair     -.--..  174 

In  vain  I  haunt  the  cold  and  silver  springs  -  -  -  -,  59 

In  vain  to  me  the  smiling  mornings  shine        -  -  -  -  -  80 

*I  .saw  a  fresh  spring  rise  out  of  a  rocke     -----  241 

*I  saw  a  silver  swan  swim  downe  the  Lee        -----  335 

*I  saw  a  spring  out  of  a  rocke  forth  ray  le  -----  241 

♦I  saw  far  off  the  dark  top  of  a  Pine      ------  389 

*I  saw  the  Master  of  the  Sun.     He  stood  -  -  -  -  -  405 

I  saw  the  object  of  my  pining  thought  -  -  -  -  -  21 

Is  it  indeed  so  ?     If  I  lay  here  dead  -----  210 

Is  it  thy  will  thy  image  should  keep  open       -  -  -  -  -  36 

Is  this  the  spot  where  Rome's  eternal  foe  ....  131 

*I  sweare,  Aurora,  by  thy  starrie  eyes  -  -  -  -  -    '        -  322 

*It  flows  through  old  hushed  jEgypt  and  its  sands  ...  410 

*1  that  have  beene  a  lover,  and  could  shew  it  -  -  -  -  -  263 

I  think  we  are  too  ready  with  complaint  -  ...  -  207 

I  thought  of  Thee,' my  partner  and  my  guide  -  -  -  .114 

I  thought  once  how  Theocritus  had  sung  .  .  .  .  208 

It  is  a  beauteous  Evening,  calm  and  free        -  -  -  -  -  96 

It  is  a  summer  twilight,  balmy-sweet        .....  183 

It  is  not  death,  that  sometime  in  -a.  sigh  .  -  -  .  -  172 

It  is  not  to  be  thought  of  that  the  Flood  .....  108 

It  is  the  fairest  sight  in  Nature's  realms  -.----  188 

It  may  indeed  be  phantasy  when  I  ....  -  122 

*I  watch,  and  long  have  watch'd,  with  calm  regret     -  -  -  -  377 

I  will  not  praise  the  often -flattered  rose   -----  135 

*I  will  not  rail,  or  grieve  when  torpid  eld         -  -  .  .  -  421 

*I  wish  no  rich-refinde  Arabian  gold         -  -  -  -  -  284 

*I  wish  sometimes,  although  a  worthlesse  thing  .  .  -  -  448 


♦Kinsman  belov'd,  and  as  a  son,  by  me  !          -            -           -            -  -    357 

Lady,  that  in  the  prime  of  earliest  youth              ....  71 

Lady,  I  bid  thee  to  a  sunny  dome         --...-     214 

Last  night  my  cheek  was  wetted  with  warm  tears          -           -            .  229 

Lawrence,  of  virtuous  father  virtuous  son        -            -            -            -  -       7° 

♦Leaning  against  the  window,  rapt  in  thought     -            -            -            -  451 

Leave  me,  O  Love,  which  reachest  but  to  dust          -            -            -  -       17 

*Let  forrain  nations  of  their  language  boast           -            -            -            -  336 

*Let  it  not  grieve  thee,  dear,  to  hear  me  say  -            .            .            -  -     441 

Let  me  not  deem  that  I  was  made  in  vain            -           -           -        ■    -  166 


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Let  me  not  to  the  marriage  of  true  minds 

Let  not  my  love  be  called  idolatry  ... 

♦Let  others  sing  of  Knights  and  Palladines 

♦Let  the  lone  hermit  praise  the  darkling  dell 
Let  those  who  are  in  favour  with  their  stars  . 

*Lct  us  each  day  enure  our  selves  to  dye  -  -  . 

Life  with  yon  Lambs,  like  day,  is  just  begun 
Like  a  musician  that  with  flying  finger    ... 
Like  as  a  huntsman  after  weary  chase 
Like  as  a  ship  that  through  the  ocean  wide 
Like  as  the  culver  on  the  bardd  bough 
Like  as  jhe  waves  make  towards  the  pebbled  shore 

♦Like  morning,  or  the  early  buds  in  spring 

♦Loe,  I  the  man,  that  whilome  lov'd  and  lost 

*Lo  !  how  the  sailor  in  a  stormy  night  -  .  . 

Lo  !  in  the  burning  west,  the  craggy  nape 

♦Lone  Flower,  hemmed  in  with  snows  and  white  as  they 
Long  time  a  child,  and  still  a  child,  when  years 

♦Long-while  I  sought  to  what  I  might  compare 
Look,  Delia,  how  w'  esteem  the  half-blown  rose 

♦Looke  how  the  pale  Queene  of  the  silent  night 
Look  how  the  flower  which  lingeringly  doth  fade 
Look  what  immortal  floods  the  sunset  pours   . 

♦Lord,  what  a  change  within  us  one  short  hour    - 
Lord,  with  what  care  hast  Thou  begirt  us  round  I 

♦Love,  banish'd  Heav'n,  in  Earth  was  held  in  scorne 
Love,  dearest  lady,  such  as  I  would  speak 
Lo  !  where  she  stands  fixed  in  a  saint-like  trance 

Make  me  thy  lyre,  even  as  the  forest  is  -  - 

Mark  when  she  smiles  with  amiable  cheer 

Martha,  thy  maiden  foot  is  still  so  light 

Mary  !  I  want  a  lyre  with  other  strings    ... 

Men  call  you  fair,  and  you  do  credit  it  -  . 

Methinks  the  innumerable  eyes  of  ours    .  -  - 

Methinks  we  do  as  fretful  children  do  .  - 

Methought  I  saw  my  late  espoused  saint 

Methought  I  saw  the  grave  where  Laura  lay 

Milton  !  thou  should'st  be  living  at  this  hour 

♦Month  after  month  the  gathered  rains  descend 
More  than  most  fair,  full  of  the  living  fire 
Mortal  !  at  last  what  will  it  thee  bestead 
Most  glorious  Lord  of  life  !  that  on  this  day 
Most  sweet  it  is  with  unuplifted  eyes  ... 
Mother!  whose  virgin  bosom  was  uncrost 
Mourn  not,  fair  Greece,  the  ruin  of  thy  kings 
Much  have  I  travelled  in  the  realms  of  gold 
Muses  that  sing  Love's  sensual  empery 
Music,  and  frankincense  of  flowers,  belong 
Music  to  hear,  why  hear'st  thou  music  sadly? 

♦Mute  is  thy  wild  harp  now,  O  Bard  sublime  !     . 

♦My  childhood  was  a  vision  heavenly  wrought 


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Index  of  First  Lines 

My  glass  shall  not  persuade  me  I  am  old 

*My  heart  ha^thanked  thee,  Bowles  !  for  those  soft  strains 
My  lady's  presence  makes  the  roses  red  -  -  . 

My  love  is  strengthened,  though  more  weak  in  seeming 
My  lute,  be  as  thou  wast  when  thou  didst  grow  - 
Mysterious  Night !  when  our  first  parent  knew 

♦Mysterious  Night!  when  the  first  Man  but  knew 


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Nature's  least  worthy  growths  have  quickest  spring  - 
Near  Anio's  stream,  I  spied  a  gentle  Dove 
Needs  must  I  leave,  and  yet  needs  must  I  love 

♦Night,  steale  not  on  too  fast :  wee  have  not  yet  - 
No  comfort,  nay,  no  comfort.     Yet  would  I    - 

♦No  greater  grief  !     Is  it  then  always  grief 
No  longer  mourn  for  me  when  I  am  dead 
No  more,  my  dear,  no  more  these  counsels  try  - 
No  more  these  passion-worn  faces  shall  men's  eyes  - 

♦No  !  no  arresting  the  vast  wheel  of  time 
Nor  can  I  not  believe  but  that  hereby 
Norfolk  sprung  thee,  Lambeth  holds  thee  dead  - 
Nor  force  nor  fraud  shall  sunder  us  !     Oh  ye  - 
Nor  happiness,  nor  majesty,  nor  fame 
'♦Nor  let  the  vulgar  sway  Opinion  beares 
Not  marble,  nor  the  gilded  monuments   - 
Not  mine  own  fears,  nor  the  prophetic  soul    - 
Not  only  with  the  Author's  happiest  praise 

♦Not  that  the  earth  is  changing,  O  my  God  !    - 
Not  to  the  multitude,  oh !  not  to  them 

♦Now  Autumn's  fire  burns  slowly  along  the  woods 
Now,  by  the  verdure  on  thy  thousand  hills 
Now  dewy  twilight  o'er  these  shattered  walls 
Now,  while  the  long-delaying  ash  assumes 
Now  while  the  Night  her  sable  veil  hath  spread 
Nuns  fret  not  at  their  convent's  narrow  room 
Nursling  of  heathen  fear  !  thy  woful  being     - 


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O  blessed  be  the  tear  that  sadly  rolled 
O  brooding  Spirit  of  Wisdom  and  of  Love 
O  call  not  me  to  justify  the  wrong 
October's  gold  is  dim — the  forests  rot 
O  deep  unlovely  brooklet,  moaning  slow 
O  earliest  singer !  O  care-charming  bird ! 
O  ever  skilled  to  wear  the  form  we  love  ! 
♦O  for  a  spell-built  palace,  by  the  craft 
O  for  my  sake  do  you  with  Fortune  chide 
O  Friend  !  1  know  not  which  way  I  must  look   - 
Of  this  fair  volume  which  we  World  do  name 
Oft  in  our  fancy  an  uncertain  thought 
Oft  in  the  after-days,  when  thou  and  I 
Oft  in  the  crowd  and  crossings  of  old  Rome 
Oft  when  my  spirit  doth  spread  her  bolder  wings 


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464  Index  of  First  Lines 

PAGE 

O  God,  impart  Thy  blessing  to  my  cries  I       -           -           -"          -            -  185 

*0  happie  Tems,  that  didst  my  Stella  beare          -            -            -     »     •  256 

Oh  blessing  and  delight  of  my  young  heart     -            -            -            -            -  213 

Oh,  for  that  winged  steed,  Bellerophon  !  -       .     .            ^            -            -  137 

Oh  how  much  more  doth  beauty  beauteous  seem       -            -            -            -  34 

O  honey-throated  warbler  of  the  grove  !  -            ...            -  186 

*Oh,  rare  young  soul !     Thou  wast  of  such  a  mould    -            -            -            -  450 

*Oh  that  I  had  no  hart,  as  I  have  none       .....  305 

Oh,  'tis  a  touching  thing,  to  make  one  weep  -  -  -  -  -171 

Oh  what  a  royalty  of  song  should  greet    ....            -  227 

*Oh  worst  of  years,  by  what  signs  shall  we  know         ....  445 

*0  if  thou  knew'st  how  thou  thy  selfe  dost  harme             ...  322 

*0  !  it  is  not  to  mee,  bright  Lampe  of  Day      .            -            -            .            .  318 

O  it  is  pleasant,  with  a  heart  at  ease          .            .            -            -            .  121 

O  keen  pellucid  air  !  nothing  can  lurk             -            -            -            -            -  192 

O  lake  of  sylvan  shore!  when  gentle  Spring        ....  184 

Old  April  wanes,  and  her  last  dewy  morn       -            -            -            -            -  144 

Old  noted  oak  !  I  saw  thee  in  a  mood      .....  148 

*0  leave  thyself  to  God  1  and  if  indeed              .....  430 

O  lift  with  reverent  hand  that  tarnished  flower  -            .            -            .  125 

*0  Lyttleton,  great  meed  shalt  thou  receive    .            -            .            .            -  352 

*0  Master,  if  Immortals  suffer  aught          .....  342 

O  melancholy  bird  ! — a  winter's  day    ......  127 

O  me  !  what  eyes  hath  Love  put  in  my  head      ....  54 

O  mountain  Stream !  the  Shepherd  and  his  Cot          -            -            -            -  "3 

Once  did  She  hold  the  gorgeous  east  in  fee          ....  105 

One  day  I  wrote  her  name  upon  the  strand     -         ■    -            -            -            -  12 

*One  month  is  past,  another  is  begun         .....  431 

O  never  say  that  1  was  false  of  heart    -            -            -            -            -            -  48 

O  Nightingale,  that  on  yon  bloomy  spray             ....  70 

On  this  lone  isle,  whose  rugged  rocks  affright             -            -            -            -  89 

On  thy  green  marge,  thou  vale  of  Avalon            ....  212 

*0  Petrarche,  head  and  prince  of  Poets  all        .            -            -            -            -  239 

O  rich  red  wheat !  thou  wilt  not  long  defer        ....  197 

Or  I  shall  live  your  epitaph  to  make    -            -            -            -            -            -  4' 

O  soft  embalmer  of  the  still  midnight!     .....  156 

O  Solitude!  if  I  must  with  thee  dwell              -            -            -            -            -  152 

*0  than  the  fairest  Day,  thrice  fairer  Night !         -            -            -            -  3^7 

■"Others  abide  our  question.     Thou  art  free      .....  427 

O  Time  !  who  know'st  a  lenient  hand  to  lay        ....  87 

Our  bark  is  on  the  waters  !  wide  around         .....  178 

Our  window-panes  enthral  our  summer  bees       ....  194 

Over  that  breathing  waste  of  friends  and  foes             ....  224 

Over  the  ground  white  snow,  and  in  the  air        -            .            -            -  222 

O  wild  West  Wind,  thou  breath  of  Autumn's  being  ....  139 

*Pale  Queen,  that  from  thy  bower  Elysian       .....  422 

Pity  refusing  my  poor  Love  to  feed          .....  19 

Pleasures  lie  thickest  where  no  pleasures  seem           ...            -  177 

*Poet  of  Nature,  thJfe  hast  wept  to  know  -            -            -            -            -  \^^ 

*Poet,  whose  unscarr'd  feet  have  trodden  Hell             ....  373 

Poor  Soul,  the  centre  of  my  sinful  earth  ...            -           -  53 


Index  of  First  Lines 

Praised  be  the  Art  whose  subtle  power  could  stay    - 
♦Prayer  is  the  world-plant's  purpose,  the  bright  flower  - 

Quick  gleam  !  that  ridest  on  the  gossamers  !  - 

Reason,  that  long  in  prison  of  my  will      -  .  - 

•  Rejoice,  ye  heroes  !     Freedom's  old  ally 

♦Remember  me  when  I  am  gone  away      -  -  . 

♦Restore  thy  tresses  to  the  golden  Ore 
Rise,  said  the  Master,  come  unto  the  feast 

♦Rotha,  my  Spiritual  Child  !  this  head  was  grey 
Royal  and  saintly  Cashel  I     I  would  gaze 
Rudely  thou  wrongest  my  dear  heart's  desire 
Run  in,  glad  waves,  scooped  in  transparent  shells 

*Runne  (Sheepheards)  run  where  Bethleme  blest  appeares 

Sacred  Religion  !  'mother  of  form  and  fear ' 
Sad  soul,  whom  God,  resuming  what  He  gave 
Schiller!  that  hour  I  would  have  wished  to  die  - 
Scorn  not  the  Sonnet ;  Critic,  you  have  frowned 

♦See  what  gay  wild  flowers  deck  this  earth-built  Cot 
Set  me  whereas  the  sun  doth  parch  the  green 
Shall  I  compare  thee  to  a  summer's  day  ?  -  - 

Sheathed  is  the  river  as  it  glideth  by   -  .  . 

She  sat  and  wept  beside  His  feet  ;  the  weight     - 
She  turned  the  fair  page  with  her  fairer  hand 

♦She  whom  this  heart  must  ever  hold  most  dear  - 
Should  the  lone  wanderer,  fainting  on  his  way 

♦Silent  companions  of  the  lonely  hour        ... 
Since  brass,  nor  stone,  nor  earth,  nor  boundless  sea  . 
Since  honour  from  the  honourer  proceeds 
Since  Nature's  works  be  good,  and  death  doth  serve 
Since  there's  no  help,  come  let  us  kiss  and  part  - 

♦Sing  soft,  ye  pretty  Birds,  while  Caelia  sleepes 
Sleep,  Silence'  child,  sweet  father  of  soft  rest 
Snow-drop  of  dogs,  with  ear  of  brownest  dye 
So  am  I  as  the  rich  whose  blessed  key      -  -  . 

So  is  it  not  with  me  as  with  that  Muse 
Sole  listener,  Duddon !  to  the  breeze  that  played 
So,  like  a  wanderer  from  the  world  of  shades  . 
Some  glory  in  their  birth,  some  in  their  skill 
Some  hand,  that  never  meant  to  do  thee  hurt 

♦Sonne  of  the  Virgin  most  immaculate       ... 

♦Son  of  the  old  moon-mountains  African  ! 
So  shall  I  live,  supposing  thou  art  true     -  -  - 

♦Sound,  Galloway,  the  trompet  of  the  Lord 
Speak  low  to  me,  my  Saviour,  low  and  sweet 
Speed  ye,  warm  hours,  along  the  appointed  path 
Spring  comes  anew,  and  brings  each  little  pledge 
Student  who  weariest  o'er  syntactic  rules 
Such  age  how  beautiful !     O  Lady  bright 

♦Suete  Nichtingale  !  in  holene  grene  that  hants 

EE 


I'AGE 

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292 
283 
212 
375 
133 
5 
223 
327 

113 
221 
120 
98 
370 

3 

28 
230 

169 
224 
406 

85 
360 

37 
14 
18 

25 

334 

58 

176 

33 
28 

III 
228 
42 
196 
307 
409 

43 
326 
204 
215 
148 
226 

lOI 

329 


^66  Index  of  First  Lines 

PAGE 

Surprised  by  joy — impatient  as  the  Wind           ....  96 

Sweet  bird,  that  sing'st  away  the  early  hours             -            -            -            -  65 

*Sweete  friend  whose  name  agrees  with  thy  increase      ...  250 

♦Sweet  flower,  thou  art  a  link  of  memory        .            -            -            .            .  414 

♦Sweet  is  the  Rose,  but  growes  upon  a  brere        ....  241 

Sweet  Mavis  !  at  this  cool  delicious  hour         .....  231 

♦Sweet  mouth,  that  sendst  a  rauskie-rosfed  breath             ...  277 

Sweet  soul,  which  in  the  April  of  thy  years    -            -            .            -            -  61 

Sweet  Spring,  thou  turn'st  with  all  thy  goodly  train      ...  62 

Sweet  unassuming  minstrel  I  not  to  thee          .....  146 

Tax  not  the  royal  Saint  with  vain  expense           -            -            -            -  ,118 

Thank  God,  bless  God,  all  ye  who  suffer  not  .....  203 

Thanks  for  the  lessons  of  this  Spot — fit  school      ....  119 

Th'  Assyrian  king,  in  peace,  with  foul  desire  ...  .4 

♦That  space  where  raging  Waves  doe  now  divide            -            -            -  290 
That  thou  art  blamed  shall  not  be  thy  defect  .            -            -            -            -38 

That  time  of  year  thou  mayst  in  me  behold         ....  39 

The  bubble  of  the  silver-springing  waves        .....  222 

The  crackling  embers  on  the  hearth  are  dead      ...            -  164 

The  crimson  Moon,  uprising  from  the  sea       .....  127 

The  dark  green  Summer,  with  its  massive  hues  ....  169 

The  day  is  gone,  and  all  its  sweets  are  gone  !              ....  157 

♦The  dewie-Roseate  morne  had  with  hir  haires   .            .            -            -  261 

The  doubt  which  ye  misdeem,  fair  Love,  is  vain       ....  9 

The  expense  of  spirit  in  a  waste  of  shame              ....  51 

The  fame  of  those  pure  bards  whose  fancies  lie          ....  160 

The  forward  violet  thus  did  I  chide          -            ...            -  45 

The  frosty  beard,  inclining  all  to  white            -            -            -            -            -  54 

The  garden  trees  are  busy  with  the  shower          ....  215 

The  garlands  fade  that  Spring  so  lately  wove              -            -            -            -  85 

The  gem,  to  which  the  artist  did  entrust  ...            -            -  19s 

The  glorious  image  of  the  Maker's  beauty      ....            -  9 

The  glorious  portrait  of  that  Angel's  face             ....  6 

The  good — they  drop  around  us,  one  by  one  ...            -            -  17s 

The  great  Macedon  that  out  of  Persia  chased      ...            -  3 

The  grey-eyed  Morn  was  saddened  with  a  shower    .            -            -            .  143 

The  hand  of  Death  lay  heavy  on  her  eyes            ....  173 

The  happy  white-throat  on  the  swaying  bough          ....  147 

The  hazel-blooms,  in  threads  of  crimson  hue       .            .            -            •  147 

♦The  hills  in  rude  tremendous  beauty  rise        ....            -  436 

The  lark  sung  loud  :  the  music  at  his  heart         ...           -  192 

The  last  and  greatest  herald  of  Heaven's  King           -            -            -            -  64 

The  little  bee  returns  with  evening's  gloom         ....  194 

♦The  lost  days  of  my  life  until  to-day  ------  4°4 

The  loveliest  flowers  the  closest  cling  to  earth    ...            -  144 

♦The  man  that  looks,  sweet  Sidney,  in  thy  face            ....  252 

The  mellow  year  is  hasting  to  its  close     ....            -  103 

♦The  mother  will  not  turn,  who  thinks  she  hears        ...            -  374 

Then  hate  me  when  thou  wilt  ;  if  ever,  now       ....  42 

The  Ocean,  at  the  bidding  of  the  Moon           .....  183 

♦The  orient  beam  illumes  the  parting  oar  .            .            •            -            .  363 


Index  of  First  Lines 

The  pigeons  fluttered  fieldward,  one  and  all 
The  poetry  of  earth  is  never  dead        -  .  . 

♦The  power  of  Armies  is  a  visible  thing     -  .  . 

*'X\^^ pur-pur-pitrri7tg  oixny  lonely  fire 
There  are  no  colours  in  the  fairest  sky      -  .  . 

There  is  a  fearful  spirit  busy  nov/  ... 

There  is  a  little  unpretending  Rill  ... 

There  is  an  awful  quiet  in  the  air        -  .  . 

'There  IS  a  pleasure  in  poetic  pains  -  .  . 

There  is  a  silence  where  hath  been  no  sound  - 
There  is  a  virtue  which  to  fortune's  height 
There  is  no  remedy  for  time  misspent  ... 
There  is  strange  music  in  the  stirring  wind 
There's  not  a  nook  within  this  solemn  Pass     - 
*These  Eyes  (deare  Lord)  once  Brandons  of  Desire 
♦These  times  touch  money'd  Worldlings  with  dismay 
The  single  eye,  the  daughter  of  the  light 
The  softest  shadows  mantle  o'er  his  form 
The  soote  season,  that  bud  and  bloom  furth  brings 
The  soul  of  man  is  larger  than  the  sky 
The  woman  singeth  at  her  spinning-wheel 
♦The  worldes  bright  comforter  (whose  beamesome  light 
The  world  is  too  much  with  us  :  late  and  soon   - 
♦The  worldly  prince  doeth  in  his  Septer  hold  - 
They  dreamed  not  in  old  Hebron,  when  the  sound 
♦They  rose  to  where  their  sovran  eagle  sails    - 
♦They  say  that  shadowes  of  deceased  ghosts 
They  say  that  thou  wert  lovely  on  thy  bier    - 
They  talk  of  Time,  and  of  Time's  galling  yoke   - 
They  that  have  power  to  hurt  and  will  do  none 
Thine  eyes  I  love,  and  they,  as  pitying  me 
♦Think  not  the  Poet's  life,  although  his  cell 
♦Think  not,  undaunted  Champions!  that  the  sea  - 
This  holy  season,  fit  to  fast  and  pray   .  .  , 

♦This  is  the  eldest  of  the  seasons  :  he  .  .  . 

♦This  night,  while  sleepe  begins  with  heavy  wings 
♦This  pleasant  Tale  is  like  a  little  copse    -  -  - 

♦Those  haires  of  Angels  gold,  thy  natures  treasure 
Thou  art  returned,  great  light,  to  that  blest  hour 
♦Thou  bright  beame-spreading  loves  thrise  happy  starre 
♦Thou  eye  of  Honour,  Nurserie  of  Fame  -  -  - 

♦Though  I  beheld  at  first  with  blank  surprise  - 
♦Though  I  have  twice  beene  at  the  Doores  of  Death 
Though  to  the  vilest  things  beneath  the  moon 
♦Thou  kno's,  brave  gallant,  that  our  Scottich  braines 
Thou,  mighty  Heathen,  wert  not  so  bereft 
Thou  on  whose  stream,  'mid  the  steep  sky's  commotion 
♦Thou  should'st  be  carolling  thy  Maker's  praise 
♦Thou  which  delight'st  to  view  this  goodly  plot  - 
Thou  who  didst  waken  from  his  summer  dreams 
Threats  come  which  no  submission  may  assuage 
Thrice  happy  he,  who  by  some  shady  grove  - 


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3S1 
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165 
206 
306 

97 

302 
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3S0 
276 
158 
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44 
52 

356 

425 

7 

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217 

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Index  of  First  Lines 


*Thrice  tosse  these  oaken  ashes  in  the  aire 

♦Thrice  worthy  guardian  of  that  sacred  spring     . 

*Thy  Beauties  blush,  like  fairest  Morne  in  Maie 
Thy  bosom  is  endeared  with  all  hearts     - 
Tired  with  all  these,  for  restful  death  I  cry     - 

*'Tis  not  for  golden  eloquence  I  pray 
'Tis  sweet,  when  slanting  light  the  field  adorns 
To  me,  fair  Friend,  you  never  can  be  old 
To  one  who  has  been  long  in  city  pent 
Too  true  it  is  my  time  of  power  was  spent 

*To  thee  that  art  Arts  lover.  Learnings  friend  - 
Toussaint,  the  most  unhappy  man  of  men  ! 

*To  what  wild  blasts  of  tyrannous  harmony 

*To  yeeld  to  those  I  cannot  but  disdaine   - 
Trust  not,  sweet  soul,  those  curled  waves  of  gold 
Two  days  she  missed  her  dove,  and  then,  alas !  - 
Two  sunny  children  wandered,  hand  in  hand 
Two  Voices  are  there  ^  one  is  of  the  Sea  - 


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Under  a  palm-tree,  by  the  green  old  Nile 
♦Unlucky  I,  unhappiest  on  Earth  - 

Unto  my  spirit  lend  an  angel's  wing    - 
*Up,  sluggish  Soule,  awake,  slumber  no  more 


ISO 

266 

55 

307 


Vane,  young  in  years,  but  in  sage  counsel  old 


74 


Wansfell  !  this  Household  has  a  favoured  lot 
Weary  with  toil,  I  haste  me  to  my  bed 
Were  I  as  base  as  is  the  lowly  plain 
*Wer't  not  for  you,  here  should  my  pen  have  rest 
*We  stand  upon  the  moorish  mountain  side 
*We  were  two  pretty  babes  ;  the  youngest  she 
What  are  we  set  on  earth  for  ?     Say,  to  toil 
What  art  thou.  Mighty  One,  and  where  thy  seat?     - 
What  aspect  bore  the  Man  who  roved  or  fled 
♦What  doth  it  serve  to  see  Sunnes  burning  Face 
What  guile  is  this,  that  those  her  golden  tresses 
♦What  is  a  Sonnet  ?     'Tis  the  pearly  shell 
♦What  lovelier  home  could  gentle  Fancy  chuse?  - 
What  meant  the  poets  in  invective  verse 
What  though,  Valclusa,  the  fond  bard  be  fled 
What  was  't  awakened  first  the  untried  ear     - 
♦When  all  our  other  Starres  set  in  their  skies 
♦When  as  Man's  life,  the  light  of  humane  lust 
When  Faith  and  Love,  which  parted  from  thee  never 
When  I  behold  thee,  blameless  Williamson   - 
When  I  behold  yon  arch  magnificent 
When  I  consider  everything  that  grows 
When  I  consider  how  my  light  is  spent    - 
When  I  do  count  the  clock  that  tells  the  time 
When  I  have  borne  in  memory  what  has  tamed 


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Index  of  First  Lines 

When  I  have  fears  that  I  may  cease  to  be       - 
When  I  have  seen  by  Time's  fell  hand  defaced  - 
When  in  disgrace  with  fortune  and  men's  eyes 
When  in  the  chronicle  of  wasted  time      .  .  . 

When  in  the  woods  I  wander  all  alone 

♦When  late  the  trees  were  stript  by  winter  pale  - 
When  Letty  had  scarce  passed  her  third  glad  year    - 

♦When  men  shall  find  thy  flower,  thy  glory  passe 
When  my  hand  closed  upon  thee,  worn  and  spent    - 
When  my  Love  swears  that  she  is  made  of  truth 

*When  pensive  on  that  Portraiture  I  gaze 
When  some  Beloveds,  'neath  whose  eyeli-ds  lay  - 
When  some  beloved  voice  that  was  to  you 

♦When  that  the  fields  put  on  their  gay  attire 
When  the  four  quarters  of  the  world  shall  rise 
When  the  storm  felled  our  Oak,  and  thou,  fair  Wold     - 
When  the  vast  heaven  is  dark  with  ominous  clouds  - 
When  to  the  birds  their  morning  meal  I  threw  - 
When  to  the  sessions  of  sweet  silent  thought  - 
When  Vulcan  cleft  the  labouring  brain  of  Jove  - 
When  we  were  idlers  with  the  loitering  rills  - 
Where  holy  ground  begins,  unhallowed  ends 

♦Where  lies  the  Land  to  which  yon  ship  must  go?     - 

♦Where  tender  Love  had  laide  him  downe  to  sleepe 
Where  Venta's  Norman  castle  still  uprears    - 
While  flowing  rivers  yield  a  blameless  sport 

♦While  my  young  cheek  retains  its  healthful  hues 
While  not  a  leaf  seems  faded  ;  while  the  fields    - 

♦While  not  a  Wing  of  Insect-Being  floats 

♦Whiles  in  my  Soule  I  feel  the  soft  warme  Hand  - 

♦Whilst  some  the  Trojane  warres  in  verse  recount 
White  star  1   that  travellest  at  old  Maggie's  pace 
Whither  is  gone  the  wisdom  and  the  power   - 
Whither,  oh  !  whither  wilt  thou  wing  thy  way  ? 

♦Who  ever  gave  more  honourable  prize 
Who  first  invented  Work,  and  bound  the  free    - 

♦Who  says  that  Shakspeare  did  not  know  his  lot 
Who  shall  lament  to  know  thy  aching  head 
Who  will  believe  my  verse  in  time  to  come  - 
Why  art  thou  silent  ?     Is  thy  love  a  plant 
Why  art  thou  speechless,  O  thou  setting  Sun  ? 
Why  is  my  verse  so  barren  of  new  pride? 

♦Why  might  I  not  for  once  be  of  that  Sect 

♦Why  should  I  any  love,  O  queene  !  but  thee 

♦Why  (worldlings)  do  ye  trust  fraile  honours  dreams  - 
Wings  have  we, — and  as  far  as  we  can  go  -  - 

Winslade,  thy  beech-capped  hills,  with  waving  grain 

♦With  footstep  slow,  in  furry  pall  yclad     -  -  - 

With  how  sad  steps,  O  Moon  !  thou  climb'st  the  skies  ! 
Within  a  thick  and  spreading  hawthorn  bush 
With  stammering  lips  and  insufficient  sound  - 


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293 
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27 
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145 

201. 


U 


47° 


Index  of  First  Lines 


Ye  hasten  to  the  dead  !    What  seek  ye  there      - 
Yes,  gentle  Time,  thy  gradual,  healing  hand  - 
Yes,  there  is  holy  pleasure  in  thine  eye  ! 
'  Yet  life,'  you  say,  '  is  life  ;  we  have  seen  and  see     - 
Young  ardent  soul,  graced  with  fair  Nature's  truth 
*You  say  I  love  not,  'cause  I  doe  not  play 
You  see  this  dog  ;  it  was  but  yesterday   - 
You  that  do  search  for  every  purling  spring  - 


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